The Appropriation of Divine Life

Chapter 16

GOD IS LIFE, and wherever the pulse of life beats, there God is. Man cannot give nor take life, but so long as he thinks he can slay the living and so long as he proceeds to slay either man or beast, he will be at enmity with life. Those who would lay hold on eternal life must seek in every way to preserve the forms in which it manifests.

We all have life, and it is God's eternal life, but it does not become ours in reality until we consciously realize it. The one who enters into eternal life, as did Jesus, must lay hold on that omnipresent life and make it one with his body. This is the secret of inheriting eternal life.

So long as man continues to lose his body through death he will be in doubt as to the reality of eternal life. Eternal life means to be eternally conscious of life in its fullness. By his very belief that life can go out of his body, man shows that he is not in the consciousness of eternal life. In theory he may see that life is omnipresent, and may reason to himself that he cannot therefore get outside of life, yet the appearance is that he lets it slip away from him. To entertain thought that life can even temporarily slip away will rob man of the consciousness of eternal life.