THE admonition of Christ Jesus, ''Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.... But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you," has been largely unheeded throughout the centuries. To the human mind, steeped in material ways, this method seems too transcendental, and therefore impractical for daily use.
The false teaching of the kingdom as a place afar off, to be attained only after death, doubtless enhances the unwillingness of mortals to seek first the kingdom of God. Accepting matter as real and God-ordained, they are forced to distinguish between a mortal and an immortal state of existence and to place the kingdom of God in the future, thus reversing the order of Christ Jesus' teaching.
When the Science of Christianity, or Christian Science, was first revealed to Mary Baker Eddy as demonstrable Science, the Scriptures were illumined and the teachings of Christ Jesus found to be as practicable to-day as when they were first uttered. Thus she was enabled to discern the kingdom of God as not a place, but a state of consciousness, the realm of the real. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 291) she writes, "Heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession of 'the mind of the Lord,' as the Scripture says."
