Article June 7, 1913 Issue

REDEEMING THE DESERT

CHARLES T. ROOT.

In the various grand divisions of the earth there are found wide and barren expanses, supporting no valuable forms of life and perilous to the traveler. In western America, in northern Africa, and in the heart of Asia lie these forbidding regions, parched, empty, and silent. Yet it has been discovered that far underneath those sterile plains flow broad streams of living water, and also that at the touch of the vivifying fluid these seemingly dead sands will spring to life and bring forth flower and fruit in luxuriant abundance. The oases of the Sahara and of Arabia, and the irrigated tracts of southern California, illustrate the wonderful transformation from thirsty waste to garden luxuriance effected by water diverted through human effort from mountain stream or subterranean river to the surface of the desert.

Without pressing too far a comparison of things spiritual with things material, we may recognize the parallelism between the reclamation of the waste place through water drawn from the depths below it, and the process of piercing in thought the crust of illusion upon which material beliefs would retain us, and allowing the "pure river of water of life" which flows eternally beneath to well up and overspread what Mrs. Eddy has described as "the great desert of human hopes" (Science and Health, p. 566), and thus to fructify the whole region of our thought and activity.

It is no light task to bring the water from the deeps of the earth to the face of the desert. Artesian wells must be driven through crumbling soil and obdurate rock, often for many hundreds of feet before the inexhaustible stream is tapped. Persistent work and unflagging faith in the outcome are necessary to obtain the beneficent result. The driller never can foretell how far he has to go or how much labor he has before him, but he knows that the supply is there, that it is ample, and that he will reach it if he persists. Not less must be the confidence and perseverance of the individual man or woman who resolutely undertakes to penetrate the dense strata of tradition and sense testimony to the fountain of Truth and Love, and thus establish a permanent channel through which its waiting flood may pour out upon and refresh his thought and enrich and fructify his experience.

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"OUT OF EGYPT."
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