Responsive Reading: I Corinthians 15 : 50-54

50.     Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.

51.     Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

52.     In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

53.     For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

54.     So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

1. Proverbs 3 : 5, 8

5     Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

8     It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.

2. Psalm 125 : 1, 2

1     They that trust in the Lord shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever.

2     As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people from henceforth even for ever.

3. Psalm 40 : 1-3

1     I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.

2     He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.

3     And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.

4. Exodus 20 : 1, 2, 7 (to ;)

1     And God spake all these words, saying,

2     I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

7     Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain;

5. Matthew 3 : 16, 17

16     And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:

17     And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

6. Matthew 4 : 1-4

1     Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

2     And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.

3     And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

4     But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

7. John 6 : 22 (to 2nd ,), 24 (they)-38, 40 (to :)

22     The day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there,

24     …they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus.

25     And when they had found him on the other side of the sea, they said unto him, Rabbi, when camest thou hither?

26     Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.

27     Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.

28     Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?

29     Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

30     They said therefore unto him, What sign shewest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee? what dost thou work?

31     Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.

32     Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.

33     For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.

34     Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.

35     And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

36     But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not.

37     All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

38     For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.

40     And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life:

8. II Corinthians 5 : 1, 4-8

1     For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

4     For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.

5     Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.

6     Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:

7     (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)

8     We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

9. I Peter 1 : 16 (it), 22-25 (to 1st .)

16     …it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.

22     Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently:

23     Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.

24     For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:

25     But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.

10. I John 2 : 15-17

15     Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

16     For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

17     And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

1. 76 : 20 (man is)-21

…man is immortal and lives by divine authority.

2. 81 : 17-18, 28-30

Man in the likeness of God as revealed in Science cannot help being immortal.… In Science, man's immortality depends upon that of God, good, and follows as a necessary consequence of the immortality of good.

3. 209 : 1-9

Man, being immortal, has a perfect indestructible life. It is the mortal belief which makes the body discordant and diseased in proportion as ignorance, fear, or human will governs mortals.

Mind, supreme over all its formations and governing them all, is the central sun of its own systems of ideas, the life and light of all its own vast creation; and man is tributary to divine Mind. The material and mortal body or mind is not the man.

4. 214 : 19-25

Mortals are inclined to fear and to obey what they consider a material body more than they do a spiritual God. All material knowledge, like the original "tree of knowledge," multiplies their pains, for mortal illusions would rob God, slay man, and meanwhile would spread their table with cannibal tidbits and give thanks.

5. 215 : 8-10

Mortals are unacquainted with the reality of existence, because matter and mortality do not reflect the facts of Spirit.

6. 476 : 13-17, 23-32

Mortals are not fallen children of God. They never had a perfect state of being, which may subsequently be regained. They were, from the beginning of mortal history, "conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity."

Remember that the Scriptures say of mortal man: "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."

When speaking of God's children, not the children of men, Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you;" that is, Truth and Love reign in the real man, showing that man in God's image is unfallen and eternal.

7. 295 : 11-24

Mortals are not like immortals, created in God's own image; but infinite Spirit being all, mortal consciousness will at last yield to the scientific fact and disappear, and the real sense of being, perfect and forever intact, will appear.

The manifestation of God through mortals is as light passing through the window-pane. The light and the glass never mingle, but as matter, the glass is less opaque than the walls. The mortal mind through which Truth appears most vividly is that one which has lost much materiality — much error — in order to become a better transparency for Truth. Then, like a cloud melting into thin vapor, it no longer hides the sun.

8. 260 : 28-7

If we array thought in mortal vestures, it must lose its immortal nature.

If we look to the body for pleasure, we find pain; for Life, we find death; for Truth, we find error; for Spirit, we find its opposite, matter. Now reverse this action. Look away from the body into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality. Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts.

9. 289 : 14-20

The fact that the Christ, or Truth, overcame and still overcomes death proves the "king of terrors" to be but a mortal belief, or error, which Truth destroys with the spiritual evidences of Life; and this shows that what appears to the senses to be death is but a mortal illusion, for to the real man and the real universe there is no death-process.

10. 215 : 22-24

With its divine proof, Science reverses the evidence of material sense. Every quality and condition of mortality is lost, swallowed up in immortality.

11. 216 : 11-21, 28-1

The understanding that the Ego is Mind, and that there is but one Mind or intelligence, begins at once to destroy the errors of mortal sense and to supply the truth of immortal sense. This understanding makes the body harmonious; it makes the nerves, bones, brain, etc., servants, instead of masters. If man is governed by the law of divine Mind, his body is in submission to everlasting Life and Truth and Love. The great mistake of mortals is to suppose that man, God's image and likeness, is both matter and Spirit, both good and evil.

When you say, "Man's body is material," I say with Paul: Be "willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." Give up your material belief of mind in matter, and have but one Mind, even God; for this Mind forms its own likeness.

12. 487 : 27-29

The understanding that Life is God, Spirit, lengthens our days by strengthening our trust in the deathless reality of Life, its almightiness and immortality.

13. 428 : 6-29

Man's privilege at this supreme moment is to prove the words of our Master: "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death." To divest thought of false trusts and material evidences in order that the spiritual facts of being may appear, — this is the great attainment by means of which we shall sweep away the false and give place to the true. Thus we may establish in truth the temple, or body, "whose builder and maker is God."

We should consecrate existence, not "to the unknown God" whom we "ignorantly worship," but to the eternal builder, the everlasting Father, to the Life which mortal sense cannot impair nor mortal belief destroy. We must realize the ability of mental might to offset human misconceptions and to replace them with the life which is spiritual, not material.

The great spiritual fact must be brought out that man is, not shall be, perfect and immortal. We must hold forever the consciousness of existence, and sooner or later, through Christ and Christian Science, we must master sin and death. The evidence of man's immortality will become more apparent, as material beliefs are given up and the immortal facts of being are admitted.