In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy gives the metaphysical meaning of wilderness in the following illuminating definition (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." Now it is plain that since all of God's children must sooner or later arrive at a right concept of man's relation to God as taught in Christian Science, we must all sometime or other pass through this wilderness in order to gain necessary understanding. The actual nature of this journey will no doubt differ in the experience of each one of us, it being dependent upon the mental condition of the individual; that is to say, upon the degree to which his desire has risen superior to the deceptions of mortal sense when he feels that the time has come for making a real effort to put off the old man and to put on the new.
Upon the extent to which one has become willing to be emancipated from the erroneous beliefs regarding the reality of matter will depend the aspect which the wilderness presents to him, for this emancipation is the deciding factor in the measure of his ability to detach himself from the distracting influences of the storm and press of everyday life around him and to feel himself alone with God. It is noteworthy, however, that according to Bible records it was actually in the wilderness, or desert, that many of the main problems were worked out in connection with the advance of the Israelites along the path towards that improved understanding of God which ultimated in monotheism. Thus it is related how, quite early in the known history of these people, when alone at night, in a place so secluded that it possessed no particular appelation even in a country remarkable for a profusion of place names, the patriarch Jacob underwent the remarkable experience which taught him the supremacy of Spirit over materiality and which so directly influenced the religious beliefs of his progeny.
Again, it was amid the desert solitudes that Moses heard the call and gained the inspiration which subsequently enabled him to lead the Israelites out of bondage into a sense of freedom such as is enjoyed by none more than by those sons of the desert, the Bedouins, who, owning no rood of territory, yet assert their liberty to roam the torrid wastes without let or hindrance from earthly potentates. It was likewise to the solitary hills, which constitute so prominent a feature of the wilderness that was the scene of the Israelites' wanderings, that Moses withdrew for the purpose of seeking divine guidance in the task of giving the Israelites a moral code, from which seclusion he returned to the wondering people, his face all glowing from the reflected light of Spirit. After being delivered from their bondage it was in the wilderness, or deserts of northern Arabia, that the Israelites sojourned during forty years while, under the firm and wise government of the divinely inspired Moses, they grew out of that sense of dependence and moral flabbiness engendered by the centuries of servitude which they had endured, and made some advance toward consolidation into a nation.
