Article January 10, 1948 Issue

"THE DEAREST SPOT ON EARTH"

MARY SUSSANAH ROBERTS

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 58), "Home is the dearest spot on earth, and it should be the centre, though not the boundary, of the affections."

Everywhere today the question of home is an acute one. People are forced to leave one locality or country to live in another, only to find that the shortage of houses is world-wide. Yet Jesus, our Way-shower, said (John 14:2), "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you." One definition of "mansion" is "an abiding-place." Since man is the reflection of God, and a reflection must be where the original is, man has an abiding place now in the Father's house, in the consciousness of Love. Therefore, home cannot be localized. There never has been a break in the realm of divine Love. Thus man has never left his home to wander in far countries in search of a better place; he has always been in the Father's house.

Sometimes those who have spent years in traveling, or who have done a lot of moving about, decide that they are going to settle down. There is only one true and satisfying way to settle down or become established and that is to become established in the knowledge of our true relationship with the Father, in whom "we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). The one who occupies a house is usually referred to as an "occupier." A dictionary defines "occupier" as "one who takes ... possession." We, like the prodigal son, may have wandered into a far country, but that is only in the illusive material realm. In reality man dwells forever in the divine Mind, or Spirit. Christian Science enables us now to take possession of, or occupy, our spiritual home, or consciousness of our at-one-ment with the Father, our mansion in His house, our place in the realm of divine Love, and to feel safe and secure from all the lies of the carnal mind.

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