Editorial September 29, 1928 Issue

The Way to Heaven

Duncan Sinclair

In what has come to be known as the Sermon on the Mount the greatest Metaphysician of all time, Christ Jesus, said: "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." The Master also said to the Pharisees who had asked him "when the kingdom of God should come": "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." Obviously, what the Nazarene meant was that the kingdom of heaven is a divine state of consciousness, brought about through obedience to the will of God.

Christian Science teaches exactly what Jesus taught about the kingdom of heaven. On page 291 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes, "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"—words identical in meaning to those of Jesus quoted above. It is important that the beginner in the study of Christian Science should note this coincidence; for sometimes those misinformed both as to the teaching of Jesus and of Christian Science on the subject, have been heard to say that Christian Science takes away their heaven and leaves nothing in its place. Christian Science certainly destroys a false, finite, localized sense of heaven—a material sense of heaven; but it as certainly substitutes therefor the true understanding of heaven as "a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal."

Now, unquestionably, Christian Science deals a heavy blow at the materialist's heaven, a blow so heavy, indeed, that it shatters it completely. How does the materialist's sense of heaven originate? It springs from the supposition that matter is real. Assume the reality of matter, and it becomes eternal; for that which is real must be indestructible. That is the position of the materialist; for matter to him is real. He is satisfied with its pleasures, although he would gladly be rid of its pains; and he looks forward to the time when he shall enter a place where all that was pleasurable in his earthly experience will remain, and probably be accentuated, while all that was painful will have been eliminated.

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