In Revelation. John presents to us the wonders of the kingdom of heaven. Mrs. Eddy says in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 573): "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. This shows unmistakably that what the human mind terms matter and spirit indicates states and stages of consciousness." Mankind has long believed that to dwell in the divine presence, to be conscious of man's unity with God, would be to experience the harmony of heaven; yet this celestial condition has seemed so remote to "the unillumined human mind" that the concept of heaven has always signalized the hope of future good, the fulfillment of cherished ideals at some time and in some place hereafter. Browning voices this hope in these appealing lines:—
There shall never be one lost good! What
was, shall live as before;
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with, for evil,
so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the
heaven, a perfect round.
Since Truth never becomes true but eternally is true, its laws must of necessity be operative to-day. The truth which constitutes heaven is demonstrable now, in the degree it is understood and obeyed. Through the coming of the Comforter, "the Spirit of truth" promised by Jesus and given to the world in Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy, God is revealed as the one infinite Mind, and man as God's spiritual idea, forever held in His eternal consciousness, thereby establishing heaven not as a distant, uncertain goal, but as the present abiding place of the real spiritual man. This is to be apprehended through the understanding of the Science of being, which Mrs. Eddy has unfolded, and which governs the coming of the Christ, Truth, to the human consciousness to arouse it to the real man's fixed, indissoluble at-one-ment with God.
