Home has been defined as "one's fixed place of abode; a place of rest or shelter," and the Christian Scientist who is learning to resolve "things into thoughts," as Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 123),may therefore think of home as a state of consciousness rather than a material dwelling place. Mortal belief, which always builds upon a material foundation, has long taught us that our environment is "whatever environs or encompasses" us, that it consists of the things outside of ourselves, that we live in this environment and are more or less controlled by it. But how can we become cognizant of what surrounds us except through our thoughts?
According to the teachings of Christian Science, spiritual or real environment is the consciousness of Mind's omnipresence. Whatever we think about may be said to comprise our environment because our thought gives it substance, so far as we are concerned. When we reverse the reasoning of mortal belief, we see that instead of living in a material environment and bring influenced by it, our environment is really whatever is reflected within our own consciousness, and everything which concerns us, everything which enters our mental home, it is our right and duty to govern in accordance with Truth. Henry Drummond, in his "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," says, "The great function of environment is not to modify, but to sustain." Then it behooves us to see that nothing enters our environment which would rob it of its purity and beauty.
How deeply Mrs. Eddy understood this spiritual demand has been proved by her loving thought for us in providing a daily newspaper, which she named The Christian Science Monitor. One dictionary defines a monitor as "something that warns or advises." In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 100) our Leader says: "Science speaks when the senses are silent, and then the evermore of Truth is triumphant. The spiritual monitor understood is coincidence of the divine with the human, the acme of Christian Science. Pure humanity, friendship, home, the interchange of love, bring to earth a foretaste of heaven." It is this that our daily Monitor is bringing into our homes that we may have something, though as yet it may be only a glimpse, of what the psalmist saw when he sang, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." We can all prove in our daily experiences that to throw the searchlight of Truth and Love upon the hourly routine of our surroundings is to externalize, to the extent of our understanding, the truth of man's being.
