Article March 14, 1931 Issue

Going Up into the Mountains

CLIFFORD A. WOODARD

The Scriptural record of the life of Christ Jesus, as given in the four Gospels, indicates that frequently he withdrew from the multitudes, and even from his beloved disciples, and went up into the mountains. In the fourteenth chapter of Matthew we find this verse: "And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone." From passages such as this we learn that Jesus went up into the mountains not for sight-seeing, although he no doubt appreciated to the full the beauty and grandeur of Palestine, but to pray, to commune with God, to rise above the troublous thoughts of the world into the realm of spiritual reality.

The value and the result of these periods of spiritual communion with God were evidenced by the works of healing which followed. For example, after relating that Jesus "went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God," Luke tells us that afterwards "he came down ... and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judæa and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases; and they that were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed. And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all."

If Jesus frequently felt the need and the desire to withdraw from the world and go up into the mountains to refresh his thought through spiritual contemplation, how very desirable, in this turbulent age, is it for us to do likewise! How, then, may we do this? How may we go up into the mountain? In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy has written (p. 511), "Spiritually interpreted, rocks and mountains stand for solid and grand ideas." We may go into the mountains, then, in the degree that we contemplate and entertain "solid and grand ideas," the ideas of divine Mind.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

The Christian Science Nurse