EVEN the casual reader must observe that the Scriptures comprise a continuous record of the lives of those who have escaped some form of evil. Noah passing unharmed through the flood, Daniel escaping injury in the lions' den, the three Hebrews suffering no ill as the result of being cast into a fiery furnace, are all familiar instances of the escape of individuals; while the children of Israel led out by Moses from their execrable bondage to the Egyptians, and later in their history, when tormented by the Midianites, led by Gideon, victorious over these enemies, are well-known examples of national escape from harm. Moreover, the pages of the New Testament are filled with accounts of distressed mortals escaping from bondage to sin, disease, or death by reason of the ministrations of Jesus the Christ or some of his disciples. All of which goes to prove that one of the great purposes for which the Bible was compiled was to show mankind the divine means that are ever at hand to deliver them from whatever would destroy their health, happiness, or peace.
Humanity, however, fails to find these divine means. "The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not"—because humanity is absorbed in seeking only material ways of escape from its troubles. Consequently, each desperate struggle humanity makes to free itself from social and industrial unrest results only in disorder taking some new form. While studying and relying on material methods to cure their ills, mortals fail to find either health of body or peace of mind. Even when they turn to the Scriptures, if they read them from a wrong standpoint, they make a gulf between their own experiences and those recorded in the Bible, because they believe that the characters of the Bible were imbued with some supernatural power not vouchsafed to the people of to-day.
Christian Science bridges this gulf, however, by revealing the fact that God is divine Mind, hence God's laws are spiritual laws which are ever operative. Patriarch, prophet, and disciple understood these spiritual laws and applied them in overcoming every form of discord. When, therefore, the Bible records the fact that an angel appeared to Moses, it does not intend to convey the idea that this made Moses' experience differ from that of other men, since some expression of the power of God and the might of Mind comes to every one. But Moses at the appearance of the angel turned aside, so the record reads; which would indicate that Moses was willing to learn about God and conform his thinking to the demands of God. Study of the Scriptures in the light of Christian Science shows that the great characters portrayed therein were men and women of like passions to the men and women of to-day, but spiritual enlightenment changed their thinking from a material to a spiritual basis. Then, in the words of Paul, they were transformed by the renewing of their mind, and were consequently delivered from their destroyers.
