History presents few more impressive scenes than that in which the long-time leader of Israel's hosts ascends the steeps of Pisgah, that he may lift up his eyes "to the westward, and northward, and southward, and eastward," and from this commanding summit wing his way out of the limitations of mortal sense. He had found himself, through humility and obedience, while tenting amid the shadowy steeps of Sinai, and, later, had faced unflinchingly the fury of one of the mightiest of the Pharaohs. In the ineffable light of Horeb he had talked with God as with a friend, had received the Ten Commandments, and delivered them to his people, and having borne this people, as a child, through all the vicissitudes of their desert wandering, he naturally longed to enter with them into the realization of the fullness of the promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. This, however, had been denied him, and in the sunset dawn of a larger life when "his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated," and with the promised land at his feet, he "whom the Lord knew face to face" disappeared from earthly scenes.
It was a splendidly dramatic departure for this grand old knight of the Exodus, and it harked forward six hundred years to the no less wondrous exit of Elijah, when, as it is written, the waters "were divided hither and thither," and with his inseparable companion he passed over Jordan "on dry ground" to gain that vision of chariots and horses of fire in which he gloriously vanished. More, it worthily prefigured a yet greater, more marvelous ascent, when the Man of Galilee strode loftily, yet humbly, amid his wondering disciples, up to the crown of Olivet, over against Nebo, and while they beheld him, "he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight."
In the presence of these stupendous events, these gravitations of greatness, one's passing from this human experience is given an entirely new perspective and significance. It means not defeat, but victory; it speaks not for lapse into darkness, but for triumph into light, for escape from the most dreaded thrall of materiality. In Christian Science this is seen to be coincident with every awakening to spiritual reality, and that the only death to which we are to consent is the death of error, which is the negative side of that new birth of which Mrs. Eddy has said (Science and Health, p. 548): "Every agony of mortal error helps error to destroy error, and so aids the apprehension of immortal Truth. This is the new birth going on hourly, by which men may entertain angels, the true ideas of God, the spiritual sense of being." This new birth is "going on hourly" in the experience of all those who are proving the sovereignty of "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus," over the laws of material belief.
