Those for whom the Bible has been illumined by Christian Science,...
The Christian Science Monitor
Those for whom the Bible has been illumined by Christian Science, see in the iterated metaphor of the Scriptures allusion to the appearing to human consciousness of the spiritual idea. One traces, moreover, a growing clearness of that perception of the truth of being, from the dim beginnings of faith in the unseen reality, to the scientific understanding and demonstration of that reality. In a certain figure, the spiritual understanding of God is likened to a city, the conscious abiding place of spiritual sense. One reads of Abraham, that he "looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God;" by faith he grasped the fact that such a state of spiritual realization was possible to man, and that eventually it would be attained.
One reads also of multitudes who followed him, that they saw the promises "afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them;" of these it is said that God "hath prepared for them a city." Then, when one reads that John, centuries later on Patmos, "saw the holy city, new Jerusalem," one understands that this clear metaphysical perception was the Scriptural culmination of the successive appearings to human consciousness, in lesser degrees of vividness, of the same spiritual truth. It was surely her discernment of the continuity of the spiritual idea that led Mrs. Eddy to declare on page 271 of Science and Health, "Christ's Christianity is the chain of scientific being reappearing in all ages, maintaining its obvious correspondence with the Scriptures and uniting all periods in the design of God."
Now this heavenly city, new Jerusalem, describes symbolically a state of mind, involving the knowledge of God. This city, or understanding of divine Science, can be entered into only through spiritual sense. Citizenship therein is entirely conditional upon the extent to which a man is able to lay off his materialism, to exchange physical for spiritual perception. The least attempt to approach this city, or spiritual reality, is productive of a measure of emancipation from material beliefs, the measure being proportionate to the whole-heartedness of the approach. What Abraham perceived of the divine Principle of being was sufficient to enable him to exchange, on the mountain of Moriah, his belief in man as material for the truth that man is God's child, and to advance, as a result of his enlightenment, from the custom of human sacrifice to a less repulsive mode of sacrifice.
The citizenship in heaven, the harmony of being, which Abraham thus won in part, Jesus the Christ fully entered upon and demonstrated, when, driven to Calvary by the materialism which would suppress the spiritual idea, he performed the supreme sacrifice, the surrender of the entire belief of life in matter, and proved thereby the deathless reality of Life as divine Mind. It was thus, by his example, that the overcoming of evil became the badge of citizenship in the new Jerusalem. John, who had discerned the full import of the resurrection, must have seen this very clearly when he voiced the promise of Principle, "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God."
The human mind has been so convinced of the actuality of life in matter, that it has found no place for the new Jerusalem of the Apocalypse in the present order of things; and it has, therefore, relegated it to the future as a glorious rest to be entered upon after the experience which mortals have named death. Now it is true that the new Jerusalem does not belong to the present order of material things, and it is equally certain that it is not to be approached by way of death. This heavenly state of consciousness is entered into just so fast as, and exactly where, a man comes into the understanding of God as divine Principle. Wherever you see the faith of an Abraham springing up in individual consciousness, there you see a man who looks for the city, the demonstrable knowledge of God, as a state possible of attainment; and wherever you find that faith expanding into the scientific understanding of the Christ, or Truth, there you see one who, like John, sees and believes and therefore demonstrates the authority which this spiritual citizenship confers upon him, to free himself from the domination of physical sense and law.
Just as the perception of divine Science stirs the individual consciousness to a change of basis, from matter to Mind, and works out for that individual a more spiritual sense of harmony in every function and detail of his experience, so the accumulating perception of the truth of being must work out for the whole world in a change from material to spiritual concepts of existence. As this change goes on, the apparently established order of things must also change. Thus in the material world to-day the old order is everywhere seen to be giving way, little by little, before the increasing perception of the spiritual, the real. The "Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children," is, to use Paul's symbolic phrase, being superseded by the "Jerusalem which is above," which, as he continued, "is free, which is the mother of us all."
The only proof a man can give that he is entering into the light and glory of the city of God, is the proof that Jesus the Christ himself gave, and insisted that others should give; the proof of spiritual power to conquer hate with the understanding of Love, to destroy disease and sin with the knowledge of Truth, and to overcome death with the understanding of Life. Of this city, that "lieth foursquare," of this abiding, spiritual consciousness of real being, Mrs. Eddy writes on page 577 of Science and Health, "This spiritual holy habitation has no boundary nor limit, but its four cardinal points are: first, the Word of Life, Truth, and Love; second, the Christ, the spiritual idea of God; third, Christianity, which is the outcome of the divine Principle of the Christidea in Christian history; fourth, Christian Science, which to-day and forever interprets this great example and the great Exemplar."
