Article July 21, 1923 Issue

The Kingdom of God

JOSEPH CARL MARKSTEIN

In that wonderful Sermon on the Mount, recorded in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells us, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Through the ages it has been the sincere desire of all right thinking people to seek and find this kingdom of God, that they might enter therein and have added unto them health and happiness,—have surcease from pain and sorrow and sin, from want and lack, and find true harmony and "all these things" which our heavenly Father has provided for those who love Him and keep His Commandments.

From the time that the church first became clouded by materiality, and man-made doctrines replaced Jesus' spiritual precepts, up to a comparatively recent date, seeking for the kingdom of God had been rather a blind groping in the dark. The Bible has, all along, pointed out the path, but mankind could not find it until the way was illuminated through the spiritual interpretation of the Bible as given by Mary Baker Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" and her other writings. The light her work has thrown on the Bible makes clear the way, if we but follow it.

Jesus told us not only what to do if we would have the added things, but where to seek if we would find this kingdom of God. He said, "The kingdom of God is within you;" so it is not far away. It has often seemed very far away—something to be attained at some distant future date and in some unknown future place—to thought darkened by the mist that went up "from the earth," spoken of in the second chapter of Genesis. Only when that mist was dispelled by the light of the spiritual interpretation of the Bible, as revealed in Christian Science, did the true perspective appear, so that all men might find that the kingdom is here, to be attained now if they wish it sufficiently to work for its realization. Is not the path to God's kingdom very clearly pointed out in the fourteenth verse of the nineteenth psalm: "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer"? Do not these words indicate the way of Truth when seen in the light of Christian Science?

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