OUR Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" given us a Glossary in which she translates certain terms into their spiritual meaning. For instance, on page 585 she gives the definition for "earth" thus: "A sphere; a type of eternity and immortality, which are likewise without beginning or end. To material sense, earth is matter; to spiritual sense, it is a compound idea." To one seeker after Truth, this definition, in conjunction with the definition of "heaven" (p. 587), also in the Glossary, opened up a line of thought which seemed most helpful and satisfying to the questionings of human thought.
It was seen that earth, in its metaphysical sense, is typical of the eternality and immortality of the real spiritual universe. The definition of "heaven" is quite as illuminating as that of "earth," and is inseparably linked with the true idea of earth. We can all look back upon the time when we had a vague impression of heaven as being somewhere over or above us geographically. And we can see that there was reason for the human mind, in its blind gropings after Truth, to think of heaven in that relation to earth, as we study Mrs. Eddy's definition of "heaven" in the Glossary, which reads in part: ''Heaven. Harmony; the reign of Spirit; government by divine Principle." Heaven is, therefore, that harmony and order, that "government by divine Principle" which sustains the eternal state of being in which man and all real ideas exist. The heaven and earth spoken of in the first chapter of Genesis must be of such a nature. They could not possibly be composed of any material element.
Was it not when consciousness seemed to separate itself from the reign of Spirit—divine Principle— that confusion entered, bringing its misconceptions of heaven and earth and man, as seeming to be material and seeming to exist outside of and apart from divine Principle, and evil belief was listened to, bringing forth its fruits of sin, sickness, and death? In the first chapter of Genesis we read: "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. . . . And God called the firmament Heaven."
