Article August 12, 1916 Issue

"A way in the wilderness"

SAMUEL JOHNSTONE MACDONALD

UPON a Sunday evening in August three friends, on their way to a Christian Science church, boarded a surface car at one of the busy transfer points in New York City. One of the three was a Christian Science practitioner, while the others were earnest students. All were very happy in the joy of loving fellowship and in the ever-expanding horizon of spiritual understanding.

When the car reached the corner of the street where the church was located and the friends got off, a stranger also alighted, and stepping up to the practitioner said, "You are going to a Christian Science church, are you not?" Upon being answered in the affirmative he added: "I was sure of it. I am a stranger in the city, having just arrived this forenoon, and did not know where to find a Christian Science church; but I saw you on Thirty-fourth Street and was sure that you were a Christian Scientist, and that if I followed, you would lead me to a church." Four friends now, instead of three, pressed forward gladly to "enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise," as the psalmist says.

In pondering on this incident later, one of the students began to see clearly that the occurrence was "not supernatural, but supremely natural" (Science and Health, Pref., p. xi). He saw and understood how it was the necessary and natural result of right thinking, and not a mere happening. It was not chance or good fortune through which this stranger upon the crowded streets of a great city could unerringly find the one who would guide him aright. It was as inevitable as is the operation of all other of God's laws.

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