Christian Science affirms that home is a divine idea expressing the omnipresence and omnipotence of God, good. Home is not a material, localized dwelling place apart from man, but rather is it a heavenly state of consciousness which man, God's spiritual image and likeness, includes. This holy habitation, this "house of the Lord," as the twenty-third Psalm describes it, is intact. No supposition of insecurity, discord, or loss can enter man's true abode. With all its lovely attributes, such as security, harmony, and stability, home is wherever man is expressing God. To members of her household, Mary Baker Eddy once observed: "Home is not a place. It is a power. Going home is doing right" (Mary Baker Eddy: A Life Size Portrait by Lyman P. Powell, 1950 edition, p. 220).
A Christian Scientist had occasion to demonstrate this truth while on her way home from a distant city one winter afternoon. As early darkness came on, sleet and light, swirling snow began to fall, quickly icing the pavement. Driving was slow and precarious. Here and there along the highway, cars and trucks, which had skidded perilously near the ditch, had been temporarily abandoned. The student drove on, but not without misgivings. The road led through a long stretch of desolate country. To quiet fear she sang hymns she had learned from the Christian Science Hymnal. Finally she felt the surety of Love's presence, and she knew that, in reality, she was already home. The heavenly calm and comfort of that moment's realization remained with her long after she had safely reached her destination.
It is this blessed assurance of Love's presence that invalids long for when they speak of "going home." Their need is to learn that heaven is not a far-off place to be reached through the door of death. Heaven is gained through inspiration, not expiration. As Christian Science reveals its healing truths to such as these, the heavenly homesick, it mercifully turns their thoughts from a temporal, material sense of existence to their true, ever-present life in Spirit. This Science shows them that pain, weariness, disease, and death are mortal beliefs, illusions, and not the truths of being. The real man is spiritual, immortal, perfect, and free, because he is the representative of God's being.
