We need never lose sight of the kingdom of heaven, the spiritual revelation of God and man. Christ Jesus never lost sight of it, and he is our Way-shower. We do not have to isolate ourselves in a quiet room to learn of God, nor do we have to retreat to a high mountain to find the, kingdom. We are in the kingdom of God whenever we behold God as perfect cause and man and the universe as perfect effect.
Ascension, which is the objective in Christian Science, need not come through suffering; it can come through the steadfast knowing of the glorious nature of true being. Let us not wait until forced by suffering to make a vigorous effort to progress out of the belief that evil is real. Instead, let us hold fast to man's perfection and continue our endeavor to demonstrate Godlikeness. It is plain that we have the choice either of being forced to ascend by suffering or of ascending through joyous hourly, consecrated effort to keep in view the spiritual facts of being.
On the Isle of Patmos the exiled John maintained spiritual vision. Repeatedly in the book of Revelation the words occur, "And I saw," but his seeing refers not to material creation. He attained his heavenly vision by relinquishing a false material sense of things—a world peopled with corporeal men and women—and replacing it with the consciousness of "a new heaven and a new earth," new to human comprehension, but divinely natural and familiar to the divine Mind.
