“The nature of Christianity is peaceful and blessed, but in order to enter into the kingdom, the anchor of hope must be cast beyond the veil of matter into the Shekinah into which Jesus has passed before us.”
Chapter 18 of Science and Health testifies of many people suffering because they had anchored their hope in materialistic means of healing: they had placed their anchor of hope within the gravitational field of mortal mind. This is especially true of those who were seeking material cure after material cure, which can be likened to a defendant charged with a capital crime, trying out different courtroom chairs to find the most comfortable one, oblivious to the fact that the whole court case has been rigged against him; or like a convict, sentenced to death, rearranging the furniture in his jail cell to make it more tolerable when in reality he should be striving with all his might to get his case retried, his conviction overturned in a higher court that he may free himself from his death-sentence — free himself from prison altogether! (See the allegory of the trial, SH, pages 330-442.)
Happily, these same patients discovered that simply reading Mrs. Eddy’s textbook, studying it along with the Bible, attentively and prayerfully, provided the thrust necessary for them to remove their anchor of hope out of the realm of matter, and cast it into the spiritual realm — just as a rocket’s strong thrust propels it out from under the influence of earth’s gravitational field that it may enter into the stratosphere.
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor, 3:17). Thus, having broken free of earth’s bondage, and now firmly anchored in the realm of the Shekinah glory of God, the dwelling place of the Most High (otherwise known as “the secret place of the Most High”), these suffering ones were well able to manifest the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
And so can you and I!