Come Ye Apart

John B. Willis

Christian Scientists who have awakened to the disabling effects of the mesmerism of massed personality, can understand why Christ Jesus should have said to his disciples, "Come ye yourselves apart," and why the good and great have ever been impelled to withdraw from the world at frequent intervals, and find in meditative solitude the poise, inspiration, and strength they may need.

When St. Paul realized that the crisis of his life had come, and foresaw the tremendous moral and spiritual requirements about to be laid upon him as an unwelcomed prophet and apostle, he "conferred not with flesh and blood," as he says, but immediately went into Arabia; that is, into the wilderness, or open country, fairly to face and finally to solve his momentous problem. It was under a kindred impulsion that for three years after her perception of the Principle of Christian healing, as Mrs. Eddy writes on page 109 of Science and Health, she "kept aloof from society, and devoted time and energies to discovering a positive rule" by which the truth she had discerned could be demonstrated.

This necessity of escape from the confusions of the world, its absorption in the things of material sense, makes appeal in due time to every sincere Truth-seeker. The Master was thus wont to get away from things, now and then, to take a new hold on scientific right consciousness and to shake off the enslaving impress of material environment and experience. Following him, we do well to betake ourselves to the great sky-domed out-of-doors, to nature interpreted at its best, that we may find God, and be wedded by His grace to the white-robed duty awaiting us at this tryst.

Endeavoring to bring to his disciples a sense of the practicability of that higher life of understanding and trust which he was living, Christ Jesus directed their wondering thought to the lilies! to the suggestive symbolism all about them which if spiritually understood would reveal to them "the glory of God;" and Tennyson was responding to this call when he wrote to a friend, "I hear there are larger waves there [at Bude] than in any other part of the British coast; and I must go thither to be alone with God." Surely, as another poet has said:—

The only atheist is one
Who hears no voice in wind or sun.

The tides of the world set strongly today toward the centers of physical excitation, activity, and noise. The glare and blare that speak for the indulgence of the extravagance of appetite, seem quite irresistible to the crowd, and there was never a time when the call to come apart, to flee material mesmerism and cultivate the habit of being alone with God, was more significant and imperative for those who would "put on Christ." Nature as understood and interpreted in Christian Science becomes our friend and helper here, for it voices, as Mrs. Eddy has said, "spiritual law and divine Love ... The floral apostles are hieroglyphs of Deity. Suns and planets teach grand lessons" (Science and Health, p. 240).

The lure of fields and flowers, as the Christian Scientist is taught to think of them, leads into paths of quietness and peace. In contrast with the character and ways of men, there is nothing bizarre and cheap here, no pretense, no cheat, and no least flavor of sensuality. For those who have ears to hear, the fragrant cloisters of the woods and the honeyed recesses of the flowers speak for the truth and beauty of Him whose "going forth is prepared as the morning." Wordsworth wondrously glimpsed this, and established in his great art the kinship of poetic insight and spiritual intuition. Nature thus interpreted becomes the retreat of the spiritually aspiring. They find in it the symbolic disclosure of the things of Spirit, and here they gather day by day the sweets of solitude. For all such, spring is not only the gladdest but the most inspiring time of the year, since it voices best the glory and infinity of Life.

Today in our northland, a thousand delicate tints are deliciously hazing the horizon. The feathered choristers are heard in every nave of the forest and every bush-framed chapel of the wayside, and blessed indeed are they who enter these courts to pray, even as did the Master, when at the close of his crowded days he went out into the mountain, or sought the companionship of the stars.

John B. Willis.

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