"Out of the depths"

John B. Willis

No one can familiarize himself with the book of Isaiah without being impressed that he has come into touch with a man of remarkable vision, one whose spiritual intuition was no less authoritative than rare. He had a comprehensive mental grasp of the problems of a race, and with prophetic exaltation and triumph of thought he portrayed the human status, and in a burst of glowing appeal called thrillingly to his people, "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." He was acquainted with the whole gamut of material ambition, pride, impulse, and asserted power, could speak knowingly of the burden of Tyre, of Babylon, and of Egypt, and name all the woes that attend the transgression of divine law.

Moreover, this prophet knew the source and power of the redemptive light which had already dawned upon his east, its ability to dispel every darkness of human sense, and so could comfort and inspire all the children of sorrow and of want. Voicing the word of Truth, he could say to the fearful and discouraged, "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness." His attitude toward every condition of afflicted sense witnesses to his clear realization of that truth supreme, enunciated by Mrs. Eddy when she writes, "God is at once the center and circumference of being" (Science and Health, p. 203), and here he based his word of gladdening assurance for those whose feet had reached the level of despair.

"Who is among you," the prophet cried, "that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God." These wondrous words bring vividly to remembrance the seemingly inexplicable fact that today there are those who, though God-fearing and obedient so far as they are conscious of their own purpose and desire, find themselves submerged, to human sense, in a sea of suffering, in a darkness that knows no light. "Out of the depths" there is sometimes heard again the agonizing cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and for many this is the supreme test of faith.

The delayed healing which is this cross for some, cannot be duly considered apart from the practitioner's "little faith" as Jesus described it; nevertheless it may witness not only to that inadequacy of present spiritual apprehension which must surely impel us all to "prayer and fasting," but to the seeming subtlety with which sin deceives; the possibility of latent unrecognized doubt, intellectual pride, longing for sense-satisfaction, or a looking to personality rather than to Principle for aid. Certain it is that the heart of educated material sense is desperately wicked, and in view of this the holding of either practitioner or patient as responsible may well be eschewed. Evil is still "a liar, and the father of it," but over against seemingly tenacious error stands that unchanging almightiness of divine Truth, that unforgetting faithfulness of infinite Love, which none can doubt and upon which therefore the afflicted can "stay."

It is interesting that the great prophet does not question the possibility that to the God-fearing and obedient such an experience may come, and yet more, that he assumes the certainty of one's finding the solution of the hardest problem in faith's insistent reversion to the undisturbed integrity of God and His man. "The law of the Lord is perfect;" His judgments are "righteous altogether." This is the rock against which the waves of incredulity must ever beat, as they have ever beaten, in vain. There can be no afflictive experience from which I may not wrest a blessing, if in its every pang I am holding to the indisputable fact that "the Lord is my light and my salvation."

The heart of the gospel is reliance upon God, and Christian Science is but an emphasis of this fact. With the prophet it counsels him whose suffering has not yielded in the least, perchance, to the faithful ministry of others, daringly to appeal his case to the tribunal of Truth, to "stay upon his God."

John B. Willis.

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