In 1898, the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune published a summary of a Christian Science lecture entitled “Everlasting Punishment” (see “Church at Cincinnati,” CS Sentinel, November 1898).
Relevant to the Bible’s account of David’s sin and its consequences, here is an excerpt from that summary:
“Sin must be punished; sin punishes itself and excludes itself from harmony; without punishment sin would increase and men would be annihilated in a common ruin; hence the eternal justice of the heaven-ordained law, ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ This is the law of harmony. ‘With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again,’ said our master, Christ. In order to ascend in the scale of being proper restitution is required of mortals. The very suffering we so much dread is often the way of progress. Suffering will only cease when sin ceases. Christian Science teaches that ‘sin makes its own hell and goodness its own heaven.'” (The last quote is from SH, page 196.)
Here are few more related references, from Mrs. Eddy’s writings:
“The sinner makes his own hell by doing evil, and the saint his own heaven by doing right.”
(SH 266)
“The evil beliefs which originate in mortals are hell.”
(SH 266)
“HELL … self-imposed agony.”
(SH 588)
“…[W]e make our own heavens and our own hells, by right and wise, or wrong and foolish, conceptions of God and our fellow-men.”
(MW 170)
The good news is, our heaven is self-imposed as well! Mrs. Eddy brings this out in The People’s Idea Of God, pages 6 – 7:
“Periods and peoples are characterized by their highest or their lowest ideals, by their God and their devil. We are all sculptors, working out our own ideals, and leaving the impress of mind on the body as well as on history and marble, chiseling to higher excellence, or leaving to rot and ruin the mind’s ideals. Recognizing this as we ought, we shall turn often from marble to model, from matter to Mind, to beautify and exalt our lives.
“Chisel in hand stood a sculptor-boy,
With his marble block before him;
And his face lit up with a smile of joy
As an angel dream passed o’er him.
He carved the dream on that shapeless stone
With many a sharp incision.
With heaven’s own light the sculptor shone, —
He had caught the angel-vision.
‘Sculptors of life are we as we stand
With our lives uncarved before us,
Waiting the hour when at God’s command
Our life dream passes o’er us.
If we carve it then on the yielding stone
With many a sharp incision,
Its heavenly beauty shall be our own, —
Our lives that angel-vision.'”