Article August 28, 1926 Issue

Wilderness Experiences

ESTHER B. BISHOP

Much of the region surrounding the holy land was a dry, barren wilderness or desert. Into this wilderness the persecuted were wont to flee in fear, and there wander in loneliness and doubt in search of refuge. This physical region, a seemingly pathless waste, was typical of the mental state of the wanderer.

At times the Christian Scientist wanders in a like wilderness of doubt and fear. There he struggles with the testimony of the material senses. How gratefully at such times he may seek guidance from the Biblical accounts of the early followers of God! Moses, in terror of human law, fled into the wilderness following his impetuous slaying of the Egyptian. There, through many years of patient labor under Jethro, the priest of Midian, he learned to turn from matter to Spirit. Then he was able to hear the voice of God from the burning bush.

To-day, fear of the material laws of sin and disease leads men into the lonely wilderness of doubt and despair. Christian Science has revealed God and the power of Spirit to many such wanderers. Having thus, like Moses, found God in the wilderness, they realize, as Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 597), that the wilderness is "the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence."

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