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,"
we find heaven.
Our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, has written in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 242): "There is but one way to heaven, harmony, and Christ in divine Science shows us this way. It is to know no other reality—to have no other consciousness of life—than good, God and His reflection, and to rise superior to the so-called pain and pleasure of the senses."
If we would realize heaven, we must rise above the false claims of matter. If we allow these claims to influence our thinking, they may seem to bring us a mistaken sense of heaven one moment, and to plunge us into hell the next. If we reason from matter, the very circumstances which appear to make for happiness for one individual may be such that at the same time they bring great unhappiness, or hell, to another.
Whether we are in heaven or believe ourselves in the false mental state called hell does not depend on person, place, thing, circumstance, or environment. These may be such that they would seem to ordain that we remain in hell indefinitely, and we may not be able to change them all at once; but we can immediately begin to change our thinking about them, and gain spiritual dominion, heaven within, in spite of them. Their seeming capacity to make or mar our happiness is the unreal power we give them in our thought. And as our thought is uplifted, harmony is bound, sooner or later, to be made manifest in our environment.
Negative mortal beliefs, such as worry, anxiety, fear, hate, a sense of limitation, bring sorrow, misery, discord, and sickness in their wake. Hell is a negation; it is the seeming absence of heaven. But the positive qualities of hope, faith, courage, love, expectation of good bring joy, happiness, health, harmony—the consciousness of heaven.
If we examine negative qualities, we invariably find that they have their seeming existence only in a false concept—belief in the reality of matter or evil, of which Jesus said, "He is a liar, and the father of it." Positive qualities are born of Spirit; and there is no imperfection, no incompleteness, no limitation in Spirit. Mortal concepts of chance and change do not affect Spirit, God, ever present and universal. So our only hope of gaining and remaining in heaven is in the spiritualization of our thinking.
Self-will, self -righteousness, and self-condemnation—all forms of selfishness—are bound to cause us suffering. Self-forgetfulness in helping others, kindness, and love bring us joy. When spiritual understanding has taken the place of material belief; when our every motive and act is controlled by good; when Spirit, infinite Mind, is enthroned in all our thinking, we gain heaven.
We usually find what we are looking for, and we can always find time to do the things we wish to do. If we are looking for slights, neglect, and difficulties, we shall find them. If we expect kindness, helpfulness, and success, and really want them, we shall find time to work for them, and shall eventually gain them. In reality, God's child is sensitive only to good. Heaven is his home.
We may overcome a sin here and there in our endeavor to rid ourselves of all error, in our attempt to climb out of hell. But sometimes we seem to try so hard to get rid of a sinful belief that we tend to make a reality of it, and so increase our fear of it. The effective way, the sure way of gaining heaven, is through regeneration—spiritualization of thought. The Master said, "Ye must be born again."
Mrs. Eddy gives an enlightening definition of heaven and of hell in the Glossary to Science and Health, which can be studied with profit; and she says (ibid., p. 266), "The sinner makes his own hell by doing evil, and the saint his own heaven by doing right."
