Article November 1, 2013

“The secret place of the most high”

Hugh A. Studdert Kennedy

Originally published in the February 28, 1918 issue of The Christian Science Monitor

Christian Science is to-day showing humanity, tired and heartsick with half truths, false trusts, and deferred hopes, both what is the secret place of the Most High and the way there. For thousands of years the world has been taught to think of a heaven beyond the grave; taught that the utmost it could hope for was salvation hereafter; taught that, in this world, God's guerdon was “many a labor, many a sorrow, many a tear;” taught that this God, in His inscrutable wisdom, sent sickness and sorrow, sin and death, among men “for a good purpose,” and that, if these miseries were endured with suitable resignation, “the last enemy” would one day usher man into heaven, would usher him into the presence of the God who had afflicted him with suffering, the idea of inflicting the smallest particle of which on his fellow man would have filled him with horror. To all this mortal man has been trained from his earliest childhood to say, “Amen.”

Through all the ages, it is true, there have been those who revolted against such teaching; men whose passionate love for humanity overbore all else, and who in their love for God and man, were able to bridge all doubts in their theology. They have so inspired many with their own hope and faith. They have found what they felt sure was the secret place of the Most High, but how they had found it, they could not say. To paraphrase Southey's words—

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