Article August 16, 1913 ISSUE

Our critic objects to the Christian Science statement...

Harry I. Hunt—Hackensack, N. J.

The Bergen News

Our critic objects to the Christian Science statement: "Heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession of 'the mind of the Lord,' as the Scripture says" (Science and Health, p. 291). In Jesus' closing address to his disciples, as reported by St. John, occurs the quotation referred to by the critic: "I go to prepare a place for you." Farther along in the same address, Jesus says: "These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs [American Standard version: dark sayings]: but the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father." Thus Jesus himself makes it plain that the only reference in the four gospels to a "place" which he was to prepare for his followers, was a figure of speech which would be explained to them as they progressed in the understanding of his teachings.

Elsewhere Jesus declares that heaven is not a place. In Luke we find this: "When he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." This is a clear, definite statement that the kingdom or rule of God within the individual consciousness makes heaven a present possibility, and not a place or locality into which the good man is to be ushered at some future period.

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