The Sermon on the Mount has been accepted by millions as an outstanding utterance of spiritual truths. Christ Jesus begins his incomparable sermon with the statement, "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their's is the kingdom of heaven." Mankind generally has regarded heaven as a desirable state of goodness, peace, and contentment, to be attained in the hereafter. In the Glossary in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy defines "heaven" as follows (p. 587:) "Harmony; the reign of Spirit; government by divine Principle; spirituality; bliss; the atmosphere of Soul." This spiritual concept brings heaven into the present as a state of harmonious spiritual consciousness.
The master Christian and Metaphysician called the state of those referred to in the first beatitude "blessed," and said they were entitled to the kingdom of heaven.
Who, then, are "the poor in spirit"? Nobody wants to be poor in the sense of lacking something good or desirable, a sense of limitation and privation. Why, it may be asked, be "poor in spirit," and how is it that only such are entitled to heaven, harmony?
