Books by Mary Baker Eddy

YOUTH AND YOUNG MANHOOD
page 747

YOUTH AND YOUNG MANHOOD

osmopolitan, November, 1907]

   EDITOR'S NOTE. - The Cosmopolitan presents this month to its
readers a facsimile of an article sent to us by Mrs. Eddy, with the
corrections on the manuscript reproduced in her own handwriting.
Not only Mrs. Eddy's own devoted followers, but the public generally,
will be interested in this communication from the extraordinary
woman who, nearly eighty-seven years of age, plays so great
a part in the world and leads with such conspicuous success her very
great following.
   Mrs. Eddy writes very rarely for any publications outside of the
Christian Science periodicals, and our readers will be interested in
this presentation of the thought of a mind that has had so much
influence on this generation.
   The Cosmopolitan gives no editorial indorsement to the teachings

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of Christian Science, it has no religious opinions or predilections to
put before its readers. This manuscript is presented simply as an
interesting and remarkable proof of Mrs. Eddy's ability in old age
to vindicate in her own person the value of her teachings.
   Certainly, Christian Scientists, enthusiastic in their belief, are
fortunate in being able to point to a Leader far beyond the allotted
years of man, emerging triumphantly from all attacks upon her, and
guiding with remarkable skill, determination, and energy a very
great organization that covers practically the civilized world.

   King David, the Hebrew bard, sang, "I have been
young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous
forsaken, nor his seed begging bread."
   I for one accept his wise deduction, his ultimate or
spiritual sense of thinking, feeling, and acting, and its
reward. This sense of rightness acquired by experience
and wisdom, should be early presented to youth and to
manhood in order to forewarn and forearm humanity.
   The ultimatum of life here and hereafter is utterly
apart from a material or personal sense of pleasure, pain,
joy, sorrow, life, and death. The truth of life, or life in
truth, is a scientific knowledge that is portentous; and
is won only by the spiritual understanding of Life as God,
good, ever-present good, and therefore life eternal.
   You will agree with me that the material body is mortal,
but Soul is immortal; also that the five personal senses
are perishable: they lapse and relapse, come and go, until
at length they are consigned to dust. But say you,
"Man awakes from the dream of death in possession of
the five personal senses, does he not?" Yes, because
death alone does not awaken man in God's image
and likeness. The divine Science of Life alone gives

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the true sense of life and of righteousness, and demonstrates
the Principle of life eternal; even the Life that
is Soul apart from the so-called life of matter or the
material senses.
Death alone does not absolve man from a false material
sense of life, but goodness, holiness, and love do this, and
so consummate man's being with the harmony of heaven;
the omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience of Life,
even its all-power, all-presence, all-Science.
Dear reader, right thinking, right feeling, and right
acting - honesty, purity, unselfishness - in youth tend
to success, intellectuality, and happiness in manhood.
To begin rightly enables one to end rightly, and thus it is
that one achieves the Science of Life, demonstrates health,
holiness, and immortality.

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