Article December 29, 1923 Issue

The Chosen People

HELEN HANCHETT WILLIAMS

Much has been written about the spiritual significance of the flight of the children of Israel out of bondage under Pharaoh into the wilderness, and of their pursuit by the "six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them," as is recounted in the fourteenth chapter of Exodus. Without the spiritual significance of the Scriptural record, this narrative would mean little more to us than any other historical account. When the chosen people, however, are seen to typify mankind, struggling out of a material sense of bondage to evil into the blessed understanding of spiritual good, we begin to perceive that the Scriptural records have a valuable lesson for us, each individual being privileged to interpret the various states and stages of the progress of the fugitives in the manner which sheds the most light on his own particular problem.

When pondering the spiritual meaning of the story of Moses and the children of Israel, we have great cause for gratitude to our dear Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, for her book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures;" for this book proves to be a veritable key to the Scriptures. On page 566 she tells us that the Red Sea typifies "the dark ebbing and flowing tides of human fear;" the wilderness, "the great desert of human hopes;" the flight itself, the "passage from sense to Soul, from a material sense of existence to the spiritual, up to the glory prepared for them who love God,"—the promised land; and that the "pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night" typifies Christian Science "leading to divine heights."

When the Israelites saw that Pharaoh pursued them, they were "sore afraid;" and as it is instinctively the habit of so-called mortal mind to put the blame for misfortune on some one else, they whiningly accused Moses, their leader: "Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? . . . For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness." But Moses, in his great understanding of his people, knew that they did not really long to be back under the yoke of slavery in Egypt, but that they were being influenced by a great fear, a mental state which knew not God, in whom their trust could be placed.

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