THE thought of a new world has always inspired mankind. Breaking through mental and physical limitations, men have gone forth as explorers and discoverers of new territories previously unknown. Sometimes their motive has been rebellion against a cramped or limited environment, at other times a conviction that over the horizon lay a new world just waiting to be discovered.
The thought of a new world has been linked with a new hope, a new way of life, a chance to start all over again. These thoughts have been borne out in practice, because following in the steps of the early pioneers men have found greater freedom, both economic and religious, thus benefiting not only themselves but mankind as a whole.
Helpful and important as these explorations and expeditions have been, of far greater help and importance is the discovery of the Science of Christianity, which reveals the spiritual universe. This indeed brings to human thought a new world, a world of freedom, health, peace, and security.
Christ Jesus declared that his kingdom was not of the material world, the world evolved and cognized by the physical senses. He constantly turned men's thoughts from the contemplation of themselves as material and as living in a material universe to the fact that man is spiritual and actually lives in a spiritual universe.
He referred to the world of Spirit as the kingdom of heaven, and through his parables of the treasure hid in a field and the pearl of great price and other illustrations he pointed to the value of this knowledge and the need to forsake all material-mindedness for it. Giving the greatest of all counsel, he declared that the kingdom of heaven lies within us, within the consciousness of each receptive heart.
Throughout the ages these truths have been glimpsed by men, but lost sight of as materiality clouded the vision or as sin, greed, apathy, and other gross elements blotted it out altogether. However, Mrs. Eddy has explained the world of Spirit, and mankind owes her a debt of gratitude for this. Science and Health, of which she is author, serves as a guide to this promised land, which is a state of spiritualized thought. This is no dreamland. It is reality.
After Mrs. Eddy discovered the world of Spirit with which Christ Jesus was so very familiar, she did not keep the discovery to herself. She labored with immeasurable love for the liberation of mankind. She knew that mankind are shackled to their own mistaken beliefs, as the children of Israel were kept in bondage to Pharaoh.
Mrs. Eddy saw the terrific odds rising up against her as she prepared to open the way to the land of freedom; but with faith in her mission, trust in God, and love for mankind she steadily went forward. Writing of this, she says (Science and Health, pp. 226, 227), "I saw before me the awful conflict, the Red Sea and the wilderness; but I pressed on through faith in God, trusting Truth, the strong deliverer, to guide me into the land of Christian Science, where fetters fall and the rights of man are fully known and acknowledged."
This new world which Christian Science reveals, this kingdom of heaven within, awaits each one of us who is willing to forsake the world of the flesh and the devil—evil. In some form or other the hazards which all pioneers and explorers have encountered must be met and mastered. We have to be willing to drop excess baggage, to leave behind worn-out, outmoded, and limited ways of thinking. We have to take on new ideas of substance, supply, and security. There is a great need to be vigilant, watchful, joyful, confident, and courageous.
This new world is a safe place, but it has no room for apathy and sloth. The vigilance and courage required are for the protection of ourselves, not from enemies of the flesh but from anything that would rob us of our newfound freedom and joy, such as fear, ignorance, or latent or tacit faith in materia medica. These enemies have no inherent power; but they need to be seen and known as powerless, and this is where the use of the bright armor of spirituality comes in.
There are few places on this planet, Earth, left to be discovered. Already mankind are reaching outside their native environment toward the stellar universe. One by one the barriers of distance, space, gravity, and material laws are being broken. But we, as individuals, do not need to look into space for a new world. Already we stand on the threshold of a new world of Spirit. The forward step is all that is needed.
This world is limitless, supernal, eternal. The journey to this world is the awakening to the fact that it is the only true world, the only world man has ever been in, the world wherein man now dwells, his ever-present eternal home. This fact discerned dispels the belief of one's being stateless, homeless, without friend or family, because the world of Spirit includes all identities and everything needful for a rich and abundant life.
Although travel has been brought within the means of many more people today, some of us may feel we are missing something if we do not manage to get around to everything that is going on. It is well for those of us who may feel that way to remember that as far as human mileage is concerned, Mrs. Eddy did not travel a great distance; but spiritually she reached far beyond the bounds and borders of the most remote parts of the physical universe.
Whether we are able to visit many countries or not, whether we have traveled the globe or never moved from our childhood home, we can still profit from our understanding of the "new heaven and [the] new earth" spoken of in Revelation (21:1). This is the kingdom of heaven, the consciousness of harmony, within.
