Article November 23, 1940 Issue

Trusting God in the Wilderness

EDGAR ISAAC NEWGASS

THERE come times in human experience when the future appears to stretch out ahead with no familiar landmarks, and void of hope or comfort. This state of things may be said to constitute a wilderness experience, which must surely give place to a broader and happier position than that which preceded it.

Some such experience must have been Noah's when, with little prospect of the renewal to come later, he found himself isolated upon a waste of waters whereon it rained "forty days and forty nights." So too with the children of Israel, during whose sojourn in the wilderness there was scant evidence of the promised land to offset present hardships and privations. And Christ Jesus' experience in the wilderness, culminating in the complete overcoming of the temptations of evil, was preliminary to his wondrous teachings and great healing ministry.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, thus defines "wilderness" on page 597 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Loneliness; doubt; darkness. Spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence."

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