Article January 10, 1925 Issue

"Up into a mountain"

CHARLES C. SANDELIN

In her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 (p. 11), Mrs. Eddy says, "To my sense the Sermon on the Mount, read each Sunday without comment and obeyed throughout the week, would be enough for Christian practice." And on page 271 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" she states, "The Sermon on the Mount is the essence of this Science." It is clear, therefore, that these teachings of Jesus demand earnest study on the part of Christian Scientists.

It is stated in the gospel of Matthew that, seeing the multitudes, Jesus "went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: and he opened his mouth, and taught them." Referring to this incident, our Leader has written in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 91): "No purer and more exalted teachings ever fell upon human ears than those contained in what is commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount,—though this name has been given it by compilers and translators of the Bible, and not by the Master himself or by the Scripture authors. Indeed, this title really indicates more the Master's mood, than the material locality." The fact that Jesus "went up into a mountain" therefore indicates to the student of Christian Science far more than that he went up to a material height. As implied by Mrs. Eddy in the passage quoted above, it signifies also an altitude of thought, a spiritual elevation or exalted consciousness.

Jesus' selection of a higher altitude to deliver his wonderful sermon was symbolic of his desire to lift his students' thoughts above the degrading materialism of worldliness. When ascending to great heights, who has not been inspired by the wider vision gained from the higher elevation? Even the sky takes on added grandeur, and one feels uplifted above the affairs of the daily life. What could be more appropriate, therefore, than that the disciples should be prepared for the wide outlook of spiritual being—"the wide horizon's grander view"—by being brought up to this mountain, that their thoughts thereby might be removed for the time being from the outlook to which they had been accustomed in their daily walks of life? But they must return to the valley, and therefrom ascend spiritually, through daily demonstration, the heights of holiness, by means of the paths pointed out by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount, in order to teach others to do likewise.

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