According to this same rule, in divine Science, the dying--if they die in
the Lord--awake from a sense of death to a sense of Life in Christ, with a
knowledge of Truth and Love beyond what they possessed before; because
their lives have grown so far toward the stature of manhood in Christ
Jesus, that they are ready for a spiritual transfiguration, through their
affections and understanding.

Those who reach this transition, called _death_, without having rightly
improved the lessons of this primary school of mortal existence,--and still
believe in matter's reality, pleasure, and pain,--are not ready to
understand immortality. Hence they awake only to another sphere of
experience, and must pass through another probationary state before it can
be truly said of them: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord."

They upon whom the second death, of which we read in the Apocalypse
(Revelation xx. 6), hath no power, are those who have obeyed God's
commands, and have washed their robes white through the sufferings of the
flesh and the triumphs of Spirit. Thus they have reached the goal in divine
Science, by knowing Him in whom they have believed. This knowledge is not
the forbidden fruit of sin, sickness, and death, but it is the fruit which
grows on the "tree of life." This is the understanding of God, whereby man
is found in the image and likeness of good, not of evil; of health, not of
sickness; of Life, not of death.

God is All-in-all. Hence He is in Himself only, in His own nature and
character, and is perfect being, or consciousness. He is all the Life and
Mind there is or can be. Within Himself is every embodiment of Life and
Mind.