This thought of immortality is neither Christlike nor true. The Christ thought is that the lost sheep will be brought back to the fold, that the prodigal son's sufferings will so help to bring true desire into his mind that he will return to his father's home, that the eleventh-hour laborer in the vineyard will receive the same compensation as any other, and that God's love and mercy endureth forever; but that man must prepare his mind for the perfect reception of the spirit of God. And that when he becomes conscious of that spirit it brings with it a realization of his sonship to God; that every stage in life has been a necessary one; that the way to God is from man's very lowest earthy nature to his very highest heavenly nature; that every step in this way is one step toward God, and that the love for the righteous and unrighteous is one love, and will save even to the uttermost ; that God's mercy endureth forever.

In the Christ Gospel, life and immortality are clearly revealed. A time will come when we shall wonder how we could have misunderstood it and made of it something just the reverse, a doctrine of death instead of eternal life.

The church doctrine of immortality is only a useless encumbrance without life or meaning. There is also an exceedingly vicious side to it in that it condemns to eternal punishment the vast majority of people who pass out of the world, and holds out a reward for a blind belief in doctrines which are in no way essential to the life.

Life and immortality are not for the few, but for all; and this little earth-life is not the beginning nor end of man's destiny. Through the countless ages of the past man has been working up to what he is, and in the ages to come he will grow into an ever-increasing life. The thought of immortality is inherent in each fiber of man's being, and, try as he may, he can not get away from it. To the wrong-doer, who knows that every wrong act brings with it its own reward, and that the seed of vicious thought will bring a harvest of pain and suffering, the outlook may not be fraught with delightful anticipations; but that suffering will, in the end, prove beneficial in bringing him at last to a knowledge of his real duties to God and man.

Jesus, the Christ, passed through the same trials and temptations that we do, and it was only through meeting those trials and temptations and overcoming them that He was able to rise above the law of sin and death, that law which people had believed in hundreds, yes, thousands, of years. He passed from under its dominion and came under the dominion of the law of the spirit of life, which frees from sin and death.

A New Testament writer says that it is the action of this latter law that all must come under; that we are all sons of God and joint heirs with Christ; that Jesus was the first fruits of them that slept; that we all sleep in the earthy man, and that all must awake in the heavenly man; that Jesus through his life and teaching brought life and immortality to light. Life and immortality had been before the very foundation of things, and had ever been throughout eternity; that in the Adam or earthy man we all die to a knowledge of our true relation to God, so, when we awaken in the Christ spirit, that is in our own lives, then we come into the fulness of life and understanding; that the old things pass away; that we no longer place our trust in any form or in anything external to ourselves; that life and intelligence are eternal, and that there is no separation either in this world or in any other to come.

And this same writer tells us that life is one. The form changes and passes away, but the soul is one with God. Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of life. If there were a period in the evolution of man when he had no conscious knowledge of God - a period that could be spoken of as death when man believed in the law of death - then through man's overcoming this law, through his becoming conscious of another law in his own life, the law of the spirit of life, he becomes the first fruits of them that slept.

This does not take away anything from

Jesus; it is not a failure to see the divine in Him, for as we see the human disappear, the divine comes into view. In the early part of the mission of Jesus He referred to Himself over and over again as the son of man, but toward the close of that mission He calls Himself the Son of God, and when He was accused of blaspheming by the people, He answered them in this way: "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the Scripture can not be broken."

You see it is essential that the word of God should come into the life before there can be a realization of the oneness with God. With Jesus it is God's will, God's intelligence, God's power acting in and through Him. He knows that he is one with God and that he has eternal life and eternal power, and that he has come under the real law of the Spirit of life. There is perfect order in the life of man as there is in the life of a plant. Some plants come to maturity in a short time and others take a long time. There is law and order in all things. There is a natural development going on in the evolution of the inner hidden possibilities of man. A time comes in his life when he shall have brought everything into subjection, when he shall have dominion and power over all things, and the last enemy to be overcome is death.

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in the twinkling of an eye. The time will come when we will have attained all the knowledge of this earth, when we will have power to lay down these human forms without sickness, without disease, without any great effort. We will have power to lay down or take up, for man must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet.

These words do not refer to any particular man, but to the great universal life of man; not to any one soul, but to all souls of which Jesus was the first fruit. Remember, that in the real temple of God we are all parts, but each part has, in a way, to demonstrate that which the whole must eventually become, and when all individuals have done this, then will man, the universal man, have attained to dominion and power, and will be subject to God and God alone, that God may be all in all.

I heard a minister say, some time ago, when a body was being buried, that the soul had gone to God and that the body would rest in the tomb until the resurrection day, when soul and body would be reunited. When the body passes away, it goes into countless forms of one kind or another. If we were going to live on this planet again, there might be some possible reason for taking up the old body, but just think of some of the bodies that would have to be taken up!

There is no thought of the resurrection of the physical body in the real Christian doctrine of life. Jesus and His disciples never taught it. This body is of this earth and it will never go further than this earth. We shall always have bodies corresponding to our environment. The great truth is that the spiritual resurrection and immortality is hidden in God, is in the thought of life as one, and that life is everlasting; that the life and power are the ever-present indwelling God, and through knowledge of His presence it is given us to shape the individual life in such a way as to at last overcome, to rise above, the law of sin and death. We must lay all stress on the spiritual resurrection, the resurrection to the knowledge of the life eternal, and that the law that brings one soul into its spiritual freedom will bring all souls; that as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.