Article December 24, 1904 Issue

The Cry in the Desert

WILLIAM BRADFORD TURNER.

Every individual character, like the individual John the Baptist, at some date must cry in the desert of earthly joy; and His voice be heard divinely and humanly. In the desolation of human understanding, divine Love hears and answers the human call for help; and the voice of Truth utters the divine verities of Being, which deliver mortals out of the depths of ignorance and vice. This is the Father's benediction.—Miscellaneous Writings, p. 81.

He who has reached this point in human experience and passed through to the other side, into the Shekinah of Love's "Peace, be still!" will recall with what anguish his soul's cry fell back again and again upon itself as he sought in vain to rise to the far-off God whom ignorance and tradition had placed in the indifferent skies. How he struggled to reach upward, and how, upon each frantic effort, fell, alack! so despairingly short of the vast height he strove in thought to gain. He will recall, also, how he begged and pleaded, seeking to bring God down from that heaven which he found he could not hope to scale. Failing in this, likewise, to register his appeal upon divine attention, and worn and weary with his fruitless throes, he falls now into sullen rebellion or else into dull despair. Conscious ever, and realizing in agony that he cannot get away from consciousness; finding that he does not die, praying he may, yet fearing lest he might; the ceaseless horror of life's mock and farce having, as it seemed, frozen its slow way to his very heart, in what hell is man! His soul cries aloud before God, "Save, or I perish!" In stress like this can a mortal find no light? Listen! What is that he hears within? "Thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee." In the stillness of his despair, in the meekness born of weakness, there comes a thought, a memory, across his conscious night, "If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou [Love] art there." "Thou wilt not leave my soul [sense] in hell;" and to him, as to Moses, the "inward voice" becomes "the voice of God" (Science and Health, p. 321). "Behold, I send an Angel (spiritual intuition, p. 581) before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place [the consciousness] which I have prepared."

"Evil is impotent to turn the righteous man from his uprightness" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 119). Let no heart despair which has ever thought one thought of right, or done one little deed of good. It is enough. The memory of it now is as a light. It will pierce the gloom. Keep eye upon it! Look away from all else, and hear the words of Life and Love. "But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, ... and do that which is LAWFUL and RIGHT, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live, ... he shall save his soul alive."

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