The Delta independent., 1922-11-03

ing to know Life and striving to DEM
onstrate life. That is the reason that
calendar is such a liar. When it |
says life is born, it lies; it lies when
it says that it is a year old; it lies
when it says it is forty years old; the |
calendar lies when it says that it is
dead 1t never did tell the truth and
it never will, because it tries to fix
Life between the point called birth
and another point called death. The
time for us to refuse to have anything
to do with the calendar is when we
begin to think not waiting until our
hair is white or gone. Begin it and
cling to it, and keep on clinging to
the thought that it does not make
difference to US what the calendar
says, that we know that God is Life,
and that man, the image and likeness
of God, knows that He is not God of
the dead. but God of the living. and
that mans birthright is Life.
Now we Christian Scientists do not
claim that we have yet reached the
point where we completely overcome
what is universally termed sin, dis
ease. or death, but we do call atten-
ton to the fact according to the re-
turns of the 1910 census have not
been able to get the figures yet OF
192O-that during the twenty-five
years preceding that time there was
an average increase of longevity of
sixteen years, and that was the first
twenty-five years during which Chris.
tian Science had become universally
known and was being practiced the
world over. If in the first twenty-five
of this knowledge of the allness and
changelessness of God as Life in our
feeble grasp of it, it could have pro-
duced such a condition as that, we
know that, as we come to a better,
and higher, and a holier, and a
purer knowledge of God, we shall con-
tinue to grow in longevity until we
shall again have upon the earth the
age of the antediluvians, and then If
that sense of limitation will pass
away, we shall know God and Jesus
Christ whom he hath sent, and to
know Him is eternal Life, as the Bible
teaches us.
That age of the antediluvians has
been an unhappy feature for the ma
tural scientists. They could not ex-
plain it away. They could not get
around it; but recently they decided
that they could get around it. for just
before going to Europe last spring
little magazine published in New
York was sent to me in which the
editor expressed himself as delighted
-p hir1l- hot Of 10 CT hn cria icfc
not the Christian Scientists, but the
natural scientists-had found the ex-
planation for the age of the antidi-
| luvians. The magazine went on to
say that they had resolved. or rather
had determined, after all these ages
of research. that the only measure of
time the antediluvians had was the
lunar measure Of time. which would
mean a month, and that therefore in
these stories of the age of the antedi-
luvians, wherever the word year ap-
pears, there should be substituted the
word month; and then it went on
to give an illustration. 1t said. for in
stance. these stories tell us that Adam
lived to be nine hundred and thirty
years of age. and the word month"
being substituted. and those months
being resolved into years by the di-
vision OF twelve, it would show that
Adam lived to be about seventy-eight
years of age. which was rather close
approximation to the theory of three
score and ten being the natural life of
man upon earth.
| Now, that sounds quite logical. and
coming from the natural scientists it
is bound to have a good deal of force.
But there are one or two little things
that interfere with the acceptance of
that theory and / want to call your at
tention to two of them. In the same
story in the Bible where they teach
dred and thirty years of age. it tells
US that when Seth was born Adam
was one hundred ano thirty years of
age. Call that months, resolve it into
years. and it shows that Seth was
born when Adam was ten and one-half
years of age; and he already had two
children.
| II is even worse with Methuselah,
because the Bible says that when
Methuselah was born his father Enoch
was siXty-five years of age, and read
ing that in the same way it shows that
j when Methuselah was born. Enoch,
his father, was five and one half years
old.
1t is not amazing that every attempt
on the part of human theory to ex-
Eplain away the almightiness of the
word of God and its truth always
slays itself, because it is not and can
not be logical; but when it is present