In these days when the world is emerging from the maelstrom of human woe, when the onward sweep of events deepens the insistent note of human hope, it is fitting that we obey the Master's tender injunction to those who had been zealously striving against similar conditions, and again turn aside into a desert place, to experience that refreshing which emanates from the presence of the God of the whole earth. And when, as did the Master and his friends so frequently, we turn to the wilderness for succor and relief, we find amid the vast silences the comfort of the word of God and the vision of the "Son of man," as exemplified in the definition of "wilderness" given by Mrs. Eddy in the Glossary of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 597): "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 desert place we may glimpse the divine meanings, obscure to the tear dimmed eyes and the grief wrung hearts which have shared in the world's agonizing travail.
In that wonderful moment when first were heard the song of the morning stars and the joyous answering shout of the sons of God, is seen the initial recognition by His creation of the divine Word translated into vision. We have for long acknowledged the creative Word, but its complement of vision has seemed less clear. Yet a little thought will disclose the one ever accompanied by the other,—every record, "And God said," fulfilled by its antiphonal, "And God saw," the word proclaiming the vision, the vision confirming the word, —and we can trace throughout the ages the thread of the divine purpose, increasing now and again as some seer arises so attuned to the Word that he is capable of envisaging it, of visualizing it in a message to the unawakened world.
At every step, from the first proclamation of God's vision of light, which simultaneously made of that vision a recognizable reality, to this age and its reiterated word which announces man's oneness with his Maker and inducts him into the God-likeness which is enabling full expression of that provable unity, is revealed the divine indissolubility of the uttered and the seen. Over and over was the message declared by the olden prophets, until at length the Apocalypse patterns in matchless words the primeval dawn, and makes visible the new heaven and earth in which dwells righteousness; for only the word of God clarifies sight to the quality of vision.
