Daily meditation, May 19th: James Allen

Heaven is not a speculative thing beyond the tomb but a real, ever-present Heaven in the heart.

MAY NINETEENTH

THE only salvation recognised and taught by Jesus is salvation from sin, and the effects of sin, here and now; and this must be effected by utterly abandoning sin, which, having done, the Kingdom of God is realised in the heart as a state of perfect knowledge, perfect blessedness, perfect peace.

"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." A man must become a new creature, and how can he become new except by utterly abandoning the old? That man’s last state is worse than his first who imagines that, though still continuing to cling to his old temper, his old opinionativeness, his old vanity, his old selfishness, he is constituted a new creature in some mysterious and unexplainable way by the adoption of some particular theology or religious formula.

Heaven is where Love rules, and where peace is never absent.