A liner crossing the Atlantic ran into a fog one evening. One of the passengers, a student of Christian Science, ill at ease over what was a familiar enough experience, retired early to his cabin to study those parts of the Bible, and of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, which elucidate the question of "mist." His books were eventually laid aside in gratitude to God that the integrity of God's creation was not to be impaired by any of the mists of error. The incident had quite gone out of thought when he learned the following morning from an excited fellow traveler that the fog had suddenly lifted during the night and disclosed the proximity of an iceberg.
Humbly thankful for this proof of divine protection, the student wondered, had an accident occurred, how many would have piously ascribed it to God's will. For, how often, supported by a too commonly urged interpretation of such Bible passages as "who maketh the clouds his chariot," people are tempted to believe that the dark clouds of adversity are the relentless chariots of His purpose! Many are thus deceived until Christian Science shows them that since God is infinite good, He cannot do evil. Meek recourse to the ever perfect truth of being will surely save us from such erroneous beliefs, however fast they may seem to come surging into experience, threatening the tender promise of the dawn, darkening the clear light of noon, disturbing the gentle peace of evening.
What is the supposed nature of a material cloud? The heat of the sun draws the moisture from below, and the cooler currents of the upper air condense it. Then it may temporarily obscure the face of the sun. Well may "the Sun of righteousness," as Malachi puts it, the truth of man's present spiritual well-being in divine Mind, likewise bring to an issue all the supposititious darkness of unrighteousness still latent in human consciousness. It is not, perhaps, astonishing that the resulting upheaval should be ignorantly associated with God's plan for purification, or that it should sometimes seem to the beginner in Christian Science that the kindly truth is aggravating rather than healing his troubles. May this not have been what both Jesus and Daniel meant by the almost identical illustrations of "the Son of man" as coming with "the clouds of heaven," and what Jesus' disciples experienced when a cloud seemed to them to accompany both his transfiguration and his ascension —a cloud engendered surely by their own lingering earthliness being brought into sudden conflict by such wondrous exhibitions of "the beauty of holiness"?
