Article February 7, 1920 Issue

The Shrine in the Desert

W. EDSON SMITH

A reminder by contrast came to the writer, not so long ago, in the shape of an artistically printed booklet telling how an exact reproduction of a widely known grotto had been made on the height of an Arizona hill, in the heart of the land that one of our poets has described as "beloved of the sun and bereft of the rain." One who has lived in the Southwest needs no introduction to an old, familiar dolce far niente condition of thought, which readily accepts as peace the languorous, still monotony of a lazy afternoon. There a dream in the shadow of an adobe wall is held to be right thinking, the mirages are many,—pleasant, shimmering pools out on the edge of things,—but with lizard and cactus and yellow, thirsty sand hitherward. There are dream shading mud walls and distant mirages northeast as well as southwest, but it is in the southwest that the shrine mentioned is located. A wide, easy path leads up to the summit of what was once an active volcano. Once there the tourist may hear the mellow Angelus perhaps, or musing, look afar through the blue haze of the magic miles while the good hours go by and are forgotten.

Such shrines are many—places where religious ecstasy may flow and ebb and fall asleep. They are not peculiar to any one belief, but are known to the followers of Confucius, to the Buddhist, to the Mohammedan, and to others; sometimes inaccessible—making virtue of a far pilgrimage; sometimes ready to hand—making virtue of a flung penny. Christian Scientists, too, have a shrine in the desert,—the abode of the printed word of Truth; but though we are grateful for both cross and crown, our shrine goes all uncarven. Our shrines are everywhere these days. Here we find one, not so large as the waste paper receptacle, maybe, but sharing a corner of the curb with it, none the less; a matter-of-fact affair,—only a sort of box with a peaked wooden roof to shed the rain, all painted a modest color. In it are copies of The Christian Science Monitor and of the Journal and Sentinel—free; almost the only free things the length of the city street; and more worth while than all that which costs so much.

Here is another in the dull little waiting room of a weather-beaten junction station; another in the otherwise hopeless hallway of a cheap rooming house. Here is one in a hotel lobby; another in a busy manufacturing plant. There are many styles of boxes, for many are the makers; but each and every one proclaiming one Life, one Truth, one Love, each and every one containing authorized literature of the Christian Science movement, stamped with the address of some near-by reading room. All this is the joyous work of those for whom Christian Science has done much and who in their turn love not a little. And of box and of literature and of every humble, true thought that set them in their place by the wayside, we may say in the words of our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 299), "With white fingers they point upward to a new and glorified trust, to higher ideals of life and its joys."

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