HE that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty," the psalmist declared; and in another psalm we read, "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations." In Christian Science we learn to grasp the practical significance of these inspired sayings of Holy Writ. We see that, man, as the perfect expression of infinite Mind, forever dwells in that secret and secure dwelling place. Naught can remove him from his home in God, nor can this real man even entertain a desire to remove himself from God's presence, because there is not an element of discord in the whole of God's creation. God's expression of Himself being infinite, eternal, changeless, the promise therefore applies to every creature of God's creating, in every place throughout all time. Did not our Master testify to this when in that beautiful story of the shepherd and the sheep he said, "No man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand"?
In reality there is no safe dwelling place except in God, but human experience and the testimony of the material senses do not testify to this. These do not tell us that God has been our dwelling place in all generations, but if the psalmist's record is true the testimony of material sense must be untrue. The evidence of a material creation, separated from God, embracing sin, sickness, and death, exists only to a false consciousness, and seems true to mortal sense simply because this sense does not know the truth. If humanity were this instant to become conscious of the truth about God and His creation, every condition of sin, sickness, and mortality would vanish, and heaven, man's dwelling place, would be consciously present to us.
Heaven is here even now; the false testimony of material sense has not destroyed it. The mortal dream never has been and never will be able to remove God's man from his dwelling place in infinite Mind. All that it can do is to present to human consciousness a dream of discord, for God's creation remains throughout eternity. St. John discerned this great fact. He saw "a new heaven and a new earth," new because he had never before seen it in all its grandeur. It is new to human consciousness to-day because it transcends the human sense of things. No change had taken place in God's universe, but St. John had changed his material sense of heaven and earth for the spiritual sense. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" our Leader gives us a wonderful account of this. She says, "This testimony of Holy Writ sustains the fact in Science, that the heavens and earth to one human consciousness, that consciousness which God bestows, are spiritual, while to another, the unillumined human mind, the vision is material" (p. 573). She too had a glimpse of this new heaven and new earth, and her teachings are bringing the vision of St. John to the apprehension of humanity.
