Article April 19, 1913 Issue

WILDERNESS

EVELYN CAMPBELL.

In the twenty-first chapter of Genesis we read of the casting out of the "bondwoman and her son." We are told that Abraham provided them with bread and a bottle of water for their journey, and the story goes on to tell us that Hagar and Ishmael wandered in the wilderness, and at length when they seemed in a desperate plight, when "the water was spent in the bottle," "God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water." A well! What abundance the word conveys, and it had been there all the time! She need not have hoarded the drops in her water-bottle.

Two lessons which we may learn from this story are, first, God's never-failing supply; second, that it did not matter to Hagar whether the water-bottle with which Abraham had provided her was large or small, for with the best of intentions he could only have given her a limited supply. Every mortal at some time reaches the stage when a material sense of things, of life and love and happiness, can no longer satisfy; then he recognizes his own helplessness, his water-bottle is empty! He is in a wilderness! In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy gives the spiritual meaning of wilderness as follows: "Loneliness; doubt; darkness ... the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and the spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence" (p. 597). Thus Christian Science explains that the wilderness is not a locality, but a state of thought. The remedy, when we find ourselves in this "vestibule," is to let go our material sense of things, and then we can behold the kingdom of Spirit, God's kingdom, which is intact here and now. Like Hagar, our eyes are opened, and we can declare that there is no wilderness, that there never was one, that divine Love was around us all the time. The loneliness, doubt, and darkness were but a dream, a belief in the absence of God, good, which we had admitted into our consciousness. As the truth is realized, the prophecy in the book of Isaiah becomes our own experience: "In the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert."

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