IN the 55th chapter of Isaiah we read: "Seek ye the Lord while he may he found, call ye upon him while he is near." To the one who is beginning to understand something of the great truth of God's omnipresence, through the inspired pages of Science and Health, this passage may come with somewhat of surprise, and appear to contradict the very idea which Mrs. Eddy shows to be essential to the Science of Christianity; that is to say, if God is everywhere, can He ever be hidden from the seeking heart? Can divine Mind ever be afar off?
In the light of scientific truth we must answer "No." But the beliefs of mortals are not found in the realm of the true, and past experience does furnish recollection with times when we sought for God and did not find Him; when we called upon Him, but only the echo of a dispirited cry came back to the weary seeker. Yet again, such experiences stand out in sharp contrast to many quick deliverances from sudden and seemingly desperate trouble, deliverances for which the glow of undying gratitude is warm in our hearts,—some severe sickness mastered in a brief hour, acute pain instantaneously overcome, or some perplexing problem of life illuminated with the light of spiritual perception, and solved even as it appeared. It is plainly evident that on these occasions we did seek God while He was to be found.
What, then, was this time? It was at once—the moment the trouble appeared! We sought the ready aid of Truth before error had been allowed to loom large before our thought, ere we had dwelt on the possibilities of its development, its consequences, its past appearances, or considered what other people's thoughts might be of us, and speculated on our own ability to deal with the apparent difficulty. For every moment thus worse than wasted, the sufferer is carried swiftly on the current of material sense farther and farther from the healing presence of divine Truth and Love. When at last, with a consciousness thronged with false images, he turns to Truth, is it any wonder that he seems to find God inaccessible? Mentally he is indeed in a region far off from Him, a region where fear and discouragement dim the atmosphere, where error seems very obstinate and palpably real.
