Article September 17, 1921 Issue

The Far Country

PERCY PHILLIP VYLE

WHAT the kingdom of God is to the one enlightened by the teaching of Christian Science, so is the far country to the groping mortal; the one knows that he rests within, the other seemingly toils without. The fabled pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is the objective of mortal desire, and the allurement assumes many forms. As children, when seeing the rainbow, have we not set out for the place where earth and sky apparently meet? Our story books told us that there we should find a store of gold. The favored place only seemed across the fields, but our feet found the distance too far, and while we were sitting by the hedgerow the rainbow vanished, and with it our hopes of treasure trove. As adults, we translate the search for the allegorical pot of gold into a seeking for health, happiness, love, pleasure, amusement, wealth fame, and other synonymous terms for the mortal constituency of harmony and success. Educated to believe that life is material and that circumstances and conditions can establish and enforce laws of their own creating, mankind turns its face toward the far country. The mirage of distance, the magnetism of the promise of the future, the mesmeric anticipation that to-morrow or next year, or at some other limit of time, we shall possess all that we crave, and then will live in a condition of perfect contentment, are false estimates of values which cannot really fetter us, restrict our freedom of action, and cheat us of the present happiness rightfully ours when we know that man is the child of God. Mortal appraising is always confident that at the next turn in the road our far country will appear with all its looked-for enchantments. Yet how often de we find that it is nothing more than another form of the sensuous reasoning which deceived us, when, as little ones, we set out for the end of the rainbow?

Now what is the truth about the far country? Knowing the truth will help to save long, anxious journeys and wearisome retracing of footsteps. Happily and convincingly Christian Science shows that this place of mortal desire is not to be found on Mercator's projection, for it is not physical. It is a picture created by and held in mortal mind. The beautiful views entertained of a distant environment, or an anticipated happiness because of a future possession, are self-imagined and self-desired. Mortal mind is wrong. Therefore, so long as we retain these pictures, we suffer from this illusive state of mind.

The true search for the far country is the search for the kingdom of God, good. It is the seeking of all for complete freedom from sin, sickness, and death, and for the overcoming of lack and limitation in every form. This search for the far country is, in reality, the yearning for a knowledge of the supreme power and for an understanding of this infinite power, that through understanding and obedience to law we can know that man reflects supremacy and can assert God-given dominion over present circumstances and conditions.

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