Chapter 16: 'Science and Health with Key to The Scriptures' by Mary Baker Eddy

Chapter XVI - The Apocalypse

Spiritual wedlock

575:1
"Come hither! Arise from your false consciousness

into the true sense of Love, and behold the Lamb's

wife, – Love wedded to its own spiritual idea." Then

cometh the marriage feast, for this revelation will de-

stroy forever the physical plagues imposed by material

sense.

The city foursquare

575:7
This sacred city, described in the Apocalypse (xxi. 16)

as one that "lieth foursquare" and cometh "down from

God, out of heaven," represents the light and

glory of divine Science. The builder and

maker of this New Jerusalem is God, as we read in the

book of Hebrews; and it is "a city which hath founda-

tions." The description is metaphoric. Spiritual teach-

ing must always be by symbols. Did not Jesus illustrate

the truths he taught by the mustard-seed and the prodi-

gal? Taken in its allegorical sense, the description of

the city as foursquare has a profound meaning. The

four sides of our city are the Word, Christ, Christianity,

and divine Science; "and the gates of it shall not be shut

at all by day: for there shall be no night there." This

city is wholly spiritual, as its four sides indicate.

The royally divine gates

575:22
As the Psalmist saith, "Beautiful for situation, the

joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of

the north, the city of the great King." It is

indeed a city of the Spirit, fair, royal, and

square. Northward, its gates open to the North Star,

the Word, the polar magnet of Revelation; eastward,

to the star seen by the Wisemen of the Orient, who fol-

lowed it to the manger of Jesus; southward, to the

genial tropics, with the Southern Cross in the skies,

– the Cross of Calvary, which binds human society

into solemn union; westward, to the grand realization