Article November 13, 1948 Issue

LET US ASCEND OUT OF THE MIST

MONITA CALDWELL GIESECKE

Some years ago a companion and I spent a delightful holiday climbing some of the milder ascents in a famous mountain resort. Often when we began our climb early in the morning, the valley and lower approaches to the mountain would be bathed in a thick white mist. Climbing in mist was a dreamlike experience. The scenery which ordinarily seemed real and tangible became invisible and substanceless. At times all we could see was the path directly ahead of us. However, it never once occurred to us to stay in the mist, to sit down and say: "Isn't it dreadful? One can't see a thing." No, the path was visible, and we kept on climbing. All of a sudden, as it seemed, we were completely above the mist and out in the glorious sunlight.

There was only one way to get out of the mist, and that was to stay on the path and keep on climbing. Would it not have been absurd to strike out right and left at a mist? No matter how long one did, it would never disperse. Have we, perhaps, been batting at some condition of disease or fear, lack or sin, as if it were real? It will never disappear in that way. Christian Science calls to us to stay on the path and ascend out of the mist, up to where the sunlight of Truth reveals the eternal perfection of our true spiritual selfhood as God's reflection.

Mary Baker Eddy, whose only guide was the Bible, occasionally uses the word "mist" in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," to illustrate the illusory nature of mortal mind and matter. She writes, for example, on page 523, "The creations of matter arise from a mist or false claim, or from mystification, and not from the firmament, or understanding, which God erects between the true and false." Also in the second chapter of Genesis "mist" is used to introduce a material sense of creation. We read (Gen. 2:6), "But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground." A dictionary gives as a definition for mist "anything which obscures, blurs, or intercepts vision, physical or mental." The mist of materiality claims to blur and obscure our vision of reality. We must get above this blurred sense of creation if we would find our true being in Spirit.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW