IN the book of Deuteronomy we find many admonitions to the children of Israel to "remember all the way" by which they were led through the wilderness up to the promised land. It is deeply interesting to note the reminiscences of different people in our own day, what they treasure up in memory and what they recall of their past experiences, and it is fair to assume that mortals have not changed their ways of thinking to any great extent since Moses' time, since we may observe everywhere a tendency to dwell upon the bitter things of human experience without gathering the lessons which these teach, even where the divine guidance is at all recognized. Nothing is really worth remembering except the way by which we are led to give up our dependence upon the material and to lay hold upon the spiritual. Our Leader's definition of wilderness, as given in Science and Health (p. 597), outlines this process in a wonderful way. It reads: "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."
In the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy the seeming dangers and perils of the wilderness journey are presented, even the "fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought," which but typify the trials of our own time, and which are the outward manifestations of belief in life, substance, and intelligence separate from God, whatever form it may assume. Forty years did the children of Israel wander in the wilderness, dull pupils, as are mortals today, who were slow to learn what boundless blessings, temporal and eternal, come to those who love and obey divine law. Moses told them of the good land before them, of its "fountains and depths," of wheat and barley, of fig and olive trees, of "goodly houses," of silver and gold,—and yet these things were as nothing compared with the spiritual realities which they were to grasp, and the wilderness lessons of guidance and overcoming which they were to remember.
One's spiritual history is his only history, and the moments of awakening to spiritual reality, whatever these experiences may cost us, are all that is worth retaining of our earthly pilgrimage. They are the brief periods "with the Lord" which count for more than a thousand years of "the belief and dream of material living" (Science and Health, p. 14). The all-important consideration for us is to recognize and acknowledge the divine leading, past and present, and to treasure all the lessons which come in this way. The one who is seeking God and his own true selfhood cannot miss either, for Jesus said that every one who seeks shall find,—not one here and there; but true seeking is imperative, for without it the leading of Love may be missed.
