Gathered in Concord, New Hampshire, on July 4, 1897, some twenty-five hundred members of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, listened to an address by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. Keynoting her remarks to the day, Mrs. Eddy observed that the occasion was a commemoration not only of the nation's civil and religious freedom, but of an even greater liberty, which springs from an understanding of the kingdom of heaven within man. She said (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 251): "Think of this inheritance! Heaven right here, where angels are as men, clothed more lightly, and men as angels who, burdened for an hour, spring into liberty, and the good they would do, that they do, and the evil they would not do, that they do not."
"Heaven right here"! From these words it will be seen that the teaching of Christian Science varies not at all from that of the Master. Christ Jesus taught and demonstrated the great fact that heaven is a mental condition, a spiritual atmosphere in which we may live, move, and have our being. Jesus' doctrine of a heaven at hand ran counter to established ritual and tradition. On one occasion a group of Pharisees thought to confound the Master by demanding that he tell them just where this kingdom of heaven might be located and when it should come. Jesus answered (Luke 17: 20, 21), "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."
In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy declares (p. 291), "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." Man "in possession of 'the mind of the Lord'" must enjoy the ever-presence of good, because certainly "the mind of the Lord" contains no evil. Experiencing the ever-presence of that which constitutes good, namely, divine Truth, Love, Life, intelligence, man must perforce enjoy an entire absence of all that purports to constitute evil—namely, error, fear, ignorance, death, and their concomitants. Whatever the human mind entertains or cultivates tends to externalize itself in either harmonious, heavenly surroundings or discordant, material conditions.
