One of the greatest sayings recorded in literature was uttered by a man who lived in a province under the authority of Rome at the beginning of the Christian era. In this country were many religious sects whose followers frequently clashed; persecution unto death because of a man's religious convictions was not an uncommon occurrence. The inhabitants of the province were heavily taxed by Rome, and priestcraft fattened on temple traffic; sensuality, greed, and cruelty were rampant in high places. There was an army of occupation in the land, and this meant daily life pursued in the shadow of fear. Slavery flourished under a rigid caste system. Justice yielded too often to expediency. The times were difficult ones, no man's head resting securely on his pillow unless he abjectly honored Caesar, and Caesar trembled on his throne lest someone should arise to wrest it from him.
In the midst of this complex and dangerous atmosphere lived a man of the people, a member of a race despised by the Romans, who, though a humble wayside preacher, was yet the master Teacher. Herod the Great had tried to dispose of him when he was born, but he had been carried into exile, where he had remained until Herod died. As this great Teacher mingled with the populace, he uttered what to them was strange doctrine. His words were carried from mouth to mouth until they reached the Roman governor and the Jewish Sanhedrin. Seditious words they seemed, because they declared the presence of a higher power than Caesar's.
To those who thronged this holy man— to the bewildered, oppressed, and broken in spirit, to the sick, sinful, and sorrowful— there came from his lips an utterance that was to outlast his human experience and the rule of the Roman Empire. This utterance was the immortal declaration (Luke 17: 21), "The kingdom of God is within you." And not only to those men of Palestine did Christ Jesus thus speak, but to all men in every age who, through his word, seek deliverance from the oppression of mortality.
In declaring that the kingdom of heaven is within man, the son of God, the Master implied that man's true citizenship is in spiritual existence; a very different picture from the one presented by the physical senses. Yet, he proved what he said. His divine citizenship was exhibited in all that he did. The reign of Spirit governed him absolutely in direct opposition to demands of mortality. He obeyed only the laws of God. He was subject alone to divine decrees. The majesty of this citizenship always delivered him from precarious situations.
The Master claimed his original rights of government when the so-called carnal mind insisted that he was only an inhabitant of the realm of matter, bound by laws of evil and subject to human mandates. He had need to assert his divine prerogative, to prove it and abide by it: for human sense denied that there was any such kingdom as the divine on earth, and that there could be an inhabitant of such a dominion among men. Yet, once spoken, those dynamic words, "The kingdom of God is within you," could never be retracted, nor could they be silenced or forgotten. They challenged the reign of materialism, the habits of men, the domination of human existence by evil. By means of Christ Jesus' demonstration of immunity from death they overthrew decisions of the supreme council of the Jewish nation, defied Roman legions, and rendered meaningless the most cherished beliefs of materiality.
The kingdom of God within is closer to an individual than any external form of human government. When recognized and obeyed, it governs such government. Human law would have annihilated the Master and his work. Divine government delivered him from destruction and perpetuated his mission. He lived in the atmosphere of the kingdom of God and was at peace, because his kingdom was not at war with any man. He was endowed with spiritual power from the realm of infinite and omnipotent good. He moved with unlimited freedom, resurrecting evidences of the presence of man's universal kingdom wherever he journeyed. Nothing could separate him from divine omnipotence as the center and the circumference of his being.
Thus Christ Jesus taught that man's privileges as a citizen of heaven are divine, inalienable rights. Human rights can be trampled upon and abrogated; divine rights are preserved and energized by immutable law. Oneness with God, freedom from evil, mental integrity, preservation of individuality, and everlasting spiritual dominion are among the divine rights of man. The Master revealed the ever-presence of these blessings when by resort to divine law he loosed the woman from her eighteen years of infirmity, restored to the lepers their God given health, and opened the eyes of the man born blind. The availability of divine resources Christ Jesus proved when he paid his taxes and fed the multitudes by means beyond the reach of human provision or disposal. Such resources are associated with man's status of divine citizenship, against which mortal mind can exert no authority.
There is a governmental beneficence impartially shared by citizens of the kingdom of God. However, this is not a paternalistic support of helplessness, but a forever renewing of the spiritual man through the preservation of his scientific oneness with eternal Life. Thus man's identity as individual, effectual, divine agency is maintained. In the kingdom of God the citizens do not run or ruin the government; they are obedient to it and glorified by it, for God works in them "both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). True knowledge of this delivers human experience from mortal misjudgment and mismanagement.
The rights of man are not established merely by substituting collective control for individual effort. Collective control of individual human activity leaves the situation in the so-called material realm and therefore subject to discord. Only by abandoning the mortal misconception of citizenship for the spiritual fact about it will men be lifted beyond the dangers of exploitation. Christianization of men's affairs is the effective change needed. The same divine authority that created man's eternal citizenship in the reign of spiritual harmony administers the laws of that citizenship for one and all. Divine jurisprudence promotes collective action without abolishing individual liberty. It prevents liberty from becoming license and power from turning into aggression. It provides impartial justice that is interlaced with mercy.
Identification with a nationality cannot be depended upon to deliver men from the injustice of human maladministration. Paul, being persecuted by the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans, found it necessary to look beyond the background of his nationality to his divine origin, in order to continue his Christian work in various countries. The importance of this viewpoint he emphasized in a letter to the church in Philippi, in which he wrote, “For our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20, Revised Version). And again, to the Ephesians he declared (2:19), "Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God."
Citizenship in the kingdom of God is a peaceful and secure experience. Under divine government nothing can arise that menaces existence; nothing can rob the individual of aught that he has inherited from his Father-Mother God; no one can encroach upon his aloneness with his Maker. The government of God, of divine Mind, does not prey upon the citizen, nor the citizen upon the government; but together they represent the dominion of God in operation. In God's kingdom man never becomes friendless, debased, or forgotten. He cannot vary from his high status of divine offspring. So the government of the kingdom is always represented with dignity and splendor by man.
Mary Baker Eddy writes in a paragraph on page 258 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," in which the marginal note is "Individual permanency," "Never born and never dying, it were impossible for man, under the government of God in eternal Science, to fall from his high estate." Man, never born into a mortal body or into a certain nation, forever having his being as a citizen of the infinite realm of Spirit, "under the government of God in eternal Science"—this is the reality of every man today.
A citizen of the infinite realm of God does not suffer tragedy in a country ravaged by war, in a land possessed by foreign masters, in an evil atmosphere, in a realm of terror, or in a state of decline; for he is not an inhabitant of any material territory, nor the victim of any untoward circumstance. He reigns in the kingdom of divine reality, whose laws constitute his very being. As this truth becomes clear to human thought, men will realize that they are not helpless before national or international discord, but can progressively demonstrate for themselves and for others the ever-present sovereignty of man's spiritual citizenship. This demonstration contributes moral strength to human affairs, aids in checking criminal propensities, and provides freedom and safety for right endeavor. And its effect is to provide for the giving of true loyalty in whatever proper ways a nation may demand it of a citizen.
Citizens of nations at times may be classified as enemies of each other. Citizens of the infinite kingdom of God are forever one harmonious family. Citizens of nations are bound by human classification and complication. Citizens of the kingdom of God are free in thought and action. The human right of pursuit of happiness may be hedged about with thorns, but the divine right of possession of joy is unfolded forever by supreme power. The healing of the nations begins with the individual demonstration of divine citizenship in obedience to God's law, for the welfare of nations is measured by the spirituality of their peoples.
Christian Science has come to awaken humanity to the presence of the universal kingdom of God at the center and circumference of all true being. Wherever a person may be, whether in a poverty-stricken country, a compulsory labor camp, or removed beyond all seeming possibility of human aid; whether without country, lost to family, or oppressed by political aggression; whether helpless, imprisoned, or wandering over the face of the earth, the presence of divine Love is with him to claim him as a citizen of the kingdom of God. As he acknowledges this true status of his being, the laws of his eternal homeland operate in his behalf to deliver him to the uttermost. Then he finds that man has never been separated from the power of his heavenly kingdom; he has never been pressed by circumstances beyond the reach of its authority.
He who declared that the kingdom of God is within man asserted his own divine citizenship when he stood before Pilate. He had been taken by force at night from the presence of his friends, betrayed, beaten, shamed, and brought before a prejudiced tribunal to be condemned to death. The following is part of the record of that moment (John 18:33, 35, 36): "Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews? . . . Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done? Jesus answered. My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence." His kingdom had not betrayed him, and he did not betray his kingdom. His spiritual allegiance enabled him to ascend beyond the reach of human hatred and cruelty.
With what mercy this experience of our Way-shower may touch the heart of him who has been classified as a displaced person and cause him to recognize his dignity of existence forever within the kingdom of his Father! What healing is in it for one who seems to be suffering from what he has accepted as his nation's tragedies! How it lifts the burdens from shoulders weighed down with national responsibilities! What demands it makes upon him who is entertaining a false sense of security in a materially strong country to arouse himself to the recognition of his spiritual citizenship!
Individual recognition of the divine rights of man subordinates the false claims of nationality as well as of personality. Obedience to spiritual government solves political as well as physical problems. Both defeatism and aggression yield to divine dominion when men live humbly and mightily according to the pattern of the Christ. And as man's spiritual citizenship is acknowledged and faithfully practiced by the inhabitants of earth, the signs of our times will be the world-wide appearing of the kingdom of God.
