ALTHOUGH most people to-day have outgrown the belief of hell as a place of fire and brimstone and of heaven as the abode of white-robed robed angels playing on harps, some may still be thinking of them as places or, at best, as states of consciousness to be reached only after death.
Through studying Christian Science we soon discover not only that heaven and hell are states of thought, not localities, and that each individual must decide which shall be his mental abode, but also that the decision must be made here and now, and made continuously. Waking in the morning with a sense of discouragement and regret over yesterday's failures or of self-condemnation for lost opportunities, dwelling on our shortcomings or on those of others, allowing anxiety and worry or sorrow and grief to possess us, believing matter and its claims to be real—these errors of material belief plunge us into hell. But when we awake each day with the determination to gain more of the understanding of good as the only reality; when we strive to express more of good and look for the good in others; when we can say,
"Thy hand in all things I behold,
And all things in Thy hand,"
