Probation after Death - 4/29/1917

​PROBATION AFTER DEATH
April 29, 1917

Golden Text
John 14:19
Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. 


Responsive Reading
II Sam 23:1-5
Now these be the last words of David.  David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, 

The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. 

The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. 

And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. 

Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow. 

Ps 103:13,15-19,22
Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. 

As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. 

For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. 

But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children; 

To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them. 

The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all. 

Bless the Lord, all his works in all places of his dominion: bless the Lord, O my soul. 


Section I
( 1)   Gen 2:8,16,17 
And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. 

( 2)   Rom 5:12,18,21 
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: 

Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. 

That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. 


( 1)   426:28-9 
Sin brought death, and death will disappear with the disappearance of sin. Man is immortal, and the body cannot die, because matter has no life to surrender. The human concepts named matter, death, disease, sickness, and sin are all that can be destroyed. 
    If it is true that man lives, this fact can never change in Science to the opposite belief that man dies. Life is the law of Soul, even the law of the spirit of Truth, and Soul is never without its representative. Man's  individual being can no more die nor disappear in unconsciousness than can Soul, for both are immortal. If man believes in death now, he must disbelieve in it when learning that there is no reality in death, since the truth of being is deathless. 

( 2)   486:12 
Death is not the result of Truth but of error, and one error will not correct another. 

( 3)   291:12 
    Universal salvation rests on progression and probation, and is unattainable without them. Heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession of "the mind of the Lord," as the Scripture says. 


Section II
( 3)   Gen 37:3,4,13,14,18,24,28,31-35 
Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours. And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him. 

And Israel said unto Joseph, Do not thy brethren feed the flock in Shechem? come, and I will send thee unto them.  And he said to him, Here am I. And he said to him, Go, I pray thee, see whether it be well with thy brethren, and well with the flocks; and bring me word again.  So he sent him out of the vale of Hebron, and he came to Shechem. 

And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him. 

And they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it. 

Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt. 

And they took Joseph's coat, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood; And they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy son's coat or no. And he knew it, and said, It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces. And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning.  Thus his father wept for him. 


( 4)   386:16-2 
    A blundering despatch, mistakenly announcing the death of a friend, occasions the same grief that the friend's real death would bring. You think that your anguish is occasioned by your loss. Another despatch, correcting the mistake, heals your grief, and you learn that your suffering was merely the result of your belief. Thus it is with all sorrow, sickness, and death. You will learn at length that there is no cause for grief, and divine wisdom will then be understood.  Error, not Truth, produces all the suffering on earth. 
    If a Christian Scientist had said, while you were laboring under the influence of the belief of grief, "Your sorrow is without cause," you would not have understood him, although the correctness of the assertion might afterwards be proved to you. So, when our friends pass from our sight and we lament, that lamentation is needless and causeless. We shall perceive this to be true when we grow into the understanding of Life, and know that there is no death. 

( 5)   215:15-24 
    We are sometimes led to believe that darkness is as real as light; but Science affirms darkness to be only a mortal sense of the absence of light, at the coming of which darkness loses the appearance of reality.  So sin and sorrow, disease and death, are the suppositional absence of Life, God, and flee as phantoms of error before truth and love. 
    With its divine proof, Science reverses the evidence of material sense. Every quality and condition of mortality is lost, swallowed up in immortality. 


Section III
( 4)   Gen 23:1,2 
And Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years old: these were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjatharba; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. 

( 5)   Gen 25:7,8 
And these are the days of the years of Abraham's life which he lived, an hundred threescore and fifteen years. Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people. 

( 6)   Luke 20:37,38 
Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him. 


( 6)   81:17-28 
    Man in the likeness of God as revealed in Science cannot help being immortal. Though the grass seemeth to wither and the flower to fade, they reappear.  Erase the figures which express number, silence the tones of music, give to the worms the body called man, and yet the producing, governing, divine Principle lives on, - in the case of man as truly as in the case of numbers and of music, - despite the so-called laws of matter, which define man as mortal. Though the inharmony resulting from material sense hides the harmony of Science, inharmony cannot destroy the divine Principle of Science. 

( 7)   429:12 
Science declares that man is subject to Mind. Mortal mind affirms that mind is subordinate to the body, that the body is dying, that it must be buried and decomposed into dust; but mortal mind's affirmation is not true.  Mortals waken from the dream of death with bodies unseen by those who think that they bury the body. 

( 8)   427:13 
    Death is but another phase of the dream that existence can be material. Nothing can interfere with the harmony of being nor end the existence of man in Science. Man is the same after as before a bone is broken or the body guillotined. If man is never to overcome death, why do the Scriptures say, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death"? The tenor of the Word shows that we shall obtain the victory over death in proportion as we overcome sin. The great difficulty lies in ignorance of what God is. God, Life, Truth, and Love make man undying. Immortal Mind, governing all, must be acknowledged as supreme in the physical realm, so-called, as well as in the spiritual. 


Section IV
( 7)   II Sam 12:18-20,22,23 
And it came to pass on the seventh day, that the child died. And the servants of David feared to tell him that the child was dead: for they said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spake unto him, and he would not hearken unto our voice: how will he then vex himself, if we tell him that the child is dead? But when David saw that his servants whispered, David perceived that the child was dead: therefore David said unto his servants, Is the child dead?  And they said, He is dead. Then David arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and came into the house of the Lord, and worshipped: then he came to his own house; and when he required, they set bread before him, and he did eat. 

And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again?  I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me. 

( 8)   I Cor 15:12-14 
Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. 


( 9)   164:17-25 
    If you or I should appear to die, we should not be dead. The seeming decease, caused by a majority of human beliefs that man must die, or produced by mental assassins, does not in the least disprove Christian Science; rather does it evidence the truth of its basic proposition that mortal thoughts in belief rule the materiality miscalled life in the body or in matter. But the forever fact remains paramount that Life, Truth, and Love save from sin, disease, and death. 

(10)   168:15-20,26 
    Because man-made systems insist that man becomes sick and useless, suffers and dies, all in consonance with the laws of God, are we to believe it? Are we to believe an authority which denies God's spiritual command relating to perfection, - an authority which Jesus proved to be false? 

Disease being a belief, a latent illusion of mortal mind, the sensation would not appear if the error of belief was met and destroyed by truth. 

(11)   187:27 
    If you take away this erring mind, the mortal material body loses all appearance of life or action, and this so-called mind then calls itself dead; but the human mind still holds in belief a body, through which it acts and which appears to the human mind to live, - a body like the one it had before death. This body is put off only as the mortal, erring mind yields to God, immortal Mind, and man is found in His image. 

(12)   174:9 
    The footsteps of thought, rising above material standpoints, are slow, and portend a long night to the traveller; but the angels of His presence - the spiritual intuitions that tell us when "the night is far spent, the day is at hand" - are our guardians in the gloom. Whoever opens the way in Christian Science is a pilgrim and stranger, marking out the path for generations yet unborn. 


Section V
( 9)   Titus 1:1,2 
Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness; In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began; 

(10)   II Tim 4:1,2,7,8 
I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. 

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. 


(13)   331:3-6 
If life were in mortal man or material things, it would be subject to their limitations and would end in death. Life is Mind, the creator reflected in His creations. 

(14)   426:11 
If the belief in death were obliterated, and the understanding obtained that there is no death, this would be a "tree of life," known by its fruits. Man should renew his energies and endeavors, and see the folly of hypocrisy, while also learning the necessity of working out his own salvation. When it is learned that disease cannot destroy life, and that mortals are not saved from sin or sickness by death, this understanding will quicken into newness of life. It will master either a desire to die or a dread of the grave, and thus destroy the great fear that besets mortal existence. 

(15)   427:29-6 
The dream of death must be mastered by Mind here or hereafter. Thought will waken from its own material declaration, "I am dead," to catch this trumpet-word of Truth, "There is no death, no inaction, diseased action, overaction, nor reaction." 
    Life is real, and death is the illusion. A demonstration of the facts of Soul in Jesus' way resolves the dark visions of material sense into harmony and immortality. 


Section VI
(11)   Luke 24:13,15,27-31,33,35,36,39,41-43,45 
And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. 

And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. 

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further. But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.  And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. 

And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, 

And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread. And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 

Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. 

And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them. 

Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, 


(16)   46:5-17,20 
    In the walk to Emmaus, Jesus was known to his friends by the words, which made their hearts burn within them, and by the breaking of bread. The divine Spirit, which identified Jesus thus centuries ago, has spoken through the inspired Word and will speak through it in every age and clime. It is revealed to the receptive heart, and is again seen casting out evil and healing the sick. 
    The Master said plainly that physique was not Spirit, and after his resurrection he proved to the physical senses that his body was not changed until he himself ascended, - or, in other words, rose even higher in the understanding of Spirit, God. 

    Jesus' unchanged physical condition after what seemed to be death was followed by his exaltation above all material conditions; and this exaltation explained his ascension, and revealed unmistakably a probationary and progressive state beyond the grave.  Jesus was "the way;" that is, he marked the way for all men. In his final demonstration, called the ascension, which closed the earthly record of Jesus, he rose above the physical knowledge of his disciples, and the material senses saw him no more. 

(17)   90:24 
    The admission to one's self that man is God's own likeness sets man free to master the infinite idea. This conviction shuts the door on death, and opens it wide towards immortality. The understanding and recognition of Spirit must finally come, and we may as well improve our time in solving the mysteries of being through an apprehension of divine Principle. At present we know not what man is, but we certainly shall know this when man reflects God. 

(18)   99:23 
    The calm, strong currents of true spirituality, the manifestations of which are health, purity, and self-immolation, must deepen human experience, until the beliefs of material existence are seen to be a bald imposition, and sin, disease, and death give everlasting place to the scientific demonstration of divine Spirit and to God's spiritual, perfect man.