Perhaps largely because of its use in the twenty-third Psalm, the expression "going through the valley" has come to mean passing through difficulty, anxiety, or sorrow. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 596) Mary Baker Eddy has defined "valley," in part, as "depression; meekness; darkness." Mrs. Eddy has here put the word "meekness" between "depression" and "darkness," perhaps to point out that meekness is a road between what to mortal sense appear to be two mountains.
When we are in the valley, mental depression seems to loom on one side, while on the other side darkness prevails. If we hug the mountain of gloom, we find that parallel to it and always blocking our vision of reality is the mountain of mental darkness. And the path between is very narrow. But like the Psalmist we, too, can sing in the valley (Ps. 23:4), "I will fear no evil: for thou art with me." Through studying the Bible and the textbook, we can learn how to take God's hand and be led up into the sunshine of spiritual joy. Then, looking back we can see that the mountains which to darkened material sense appeared to be gloomy and depressing, were so only because we had not yet begun to scale their heights.
Valley experiences of one kind or another come to all of us on our journey Spiritward. Whether we are mentally downcast or literally in a pit, imprisoned in selfishness or literally in a dungeon, it is comforting to reflect that meekness, a quality which trusts all to God, good, was instrumental in bringing many a beloved Biblical character triumphantly through the valley.
In a great testing time, Abraham meekly prepared to obey God's command to offer up his only son Isaac, "upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of" (Gen. 22:2). In the valley, and all the way up that seemingly dark mountain of sacrifice, Abraham was obedient and humble. When he reached its summit, he heard the angel of the Lord telling him not to lay a hand upon the lad, "for now I know that thou fearest God" (Gen. 22: 12). With what joy Abraham must later have looked back towards that mountain and seen that its darkness and depression were only illusions; that where it seemed to be was in reality a mountain of blessing and reassurance.
By patience and forgiveness, Joseph was delivered from jealousy and persecution, as well as from the pit and the dungeon. When the people murmured against Moses because the waters of Marah were too bitter to drink, he did not lose patience with his followers for blaming him without cause; he cried unto God, who told him how the waters might be made sweet. Later, at Elim, God showed the people twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees. Thus Moses, because he was obedient, passed triumphantly through the valley of unjust criticism. Elijah passed triumphantly through disappointment and was enabled to see God and to hear the "still small voice" on Mount Horeb. By patient allegiance to God and by humble prayer for the very friends who had reproved him in his misery, Job passed triumphantly through the valley of poverty and physical and mental suffering. Jesus, manifesting the nature of Love itself, bore all things, endured all things. At one time the Master assured Thomas (John 14:6), "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." And did he not prove that the Christ-way was the way of meekness? With humility he endured even the cross, praying (Luke 23:34), "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." For Jesus, the way of meekness was the way of Truth and Life; it led him triumphantly "through the valley of the shadow of death" and enabled him to demonstrate eternal Life.
But, it may be asked, what of the valley experience of today? Of what practical value is humility to the soldier in a fox hole, to the sailor in a submarine, to the pilot in a bomber? How does meekness operate beneficially in places such as these?
Several months ago our daily newspapers carried a story of a soldier adrift on a raft. Having no light to signal with, he prayed fervently to God for deliverance. A pilot flying high above the raft saw a light, guided his plane to it, and effected a rescue. "I had no flashlight," explained the pilot on the raft, when he was rescued. Meekness calls for absolute reliance on God, and such reliance is always accompanied by divine illumination.
Sometimes valley experiences are necessary to further our progress Spiritward. A student of Christian Science, traveling in the hill towns of Italy one summer, was taken with a painful malady which caused her to seek a practitioner in one of the Italian cities. The train that carried her down the mountainside was crowded; the day was extremely hot; passengers were standing in the aisles. A feeling "of compassion came over the student, and she rose to give her seat to a younger woman who seemed to be suffering intensely from the heat. The younger woman accepted the courtesy with a smile of loving gratitude. One by one other passengers rose to share their places, and soon harmony prevailed throughout the car. Later, when the Christian Scientist had located a practitioner and was relating this experience to her, the practitioner said: "I do not need to give you a treatment. You are healed." Joyfully the student went back to spend the rest of her vacation in the mountains. She experienced no further discomfort from the condition for which she had sought help. Meekness, expressed in a simple, kindly act, had brought healing.
If we must go alone through what appears to human sense to be the darkest of all valleys, we have our Leader's calm assurance, in the continuation of her definition of "valley" (Science and Health, p. 596): "Though the way is dark in mortal sense, divine Life and Love illumine it, destroy the unrest of mortal thought, the fear of death, and the supposed reality of error. Christian Science, contradicting sense, maketh the valley to bud and blossom as the rose."
A Christian Scientist who had lost a very dear one spent many prayerful hours in studying Mrs. Eddy's definition of "burial" and of "resurrection" (ibid., pp. 582, 593), together with other passages in the textbook and in "Miscellaneous Writings." She found comfort in these words which came to her "contradicting sense": "The greatest wrong is but a supposititious opposite of the highest right" (ibid., p. 368). Surely this was the greatest wrong that anyone should believe that man, the image of God, Spirit, could be buried; that love, tenderness, loyalty, protection, courage, forgiveness, the qualities which her friend expressed, could be put out of sight. A prayer from Mrs. Eddy's "Dedicatory Sermon" (Pulpit and Press, pp. 10, 11) came to her to replace the false opposite with the "highest right": "May the kingdom of God within you,—with you alway,—reascending, bear you outward, upward, heavenward."
This prayer began immediately to spiritualize her thought, and months later, through further unfoldment, she was able to realize in a measure that the individuality of her friend had not been lost sight of. As she continued to study the Bible and our Leader's writings, and to pray humbly for daily guidance, she found at length, with a sense of deep gratitude, that this study and prayer was like taking God's hand in the darkness and letting Him lead her to the light; that what had appeared to be a narrow pass through the valley was in reality "the way" of humility, leading up to broad fields of enlarged opportunity for unselfed service.
Sometimes, even while we are still in the valley, we discover that the road through it is holy ground—ground carpeted with the radiant blossoms of gentleness, sympathy, tolerance, love, spiritual strength, and spiritual understanding. One of the flowers that Milton summoned to strew upon the "laureate hearse" of Lycidas was "the glowing violet." The poet has been criticized for his use of the word "glowing" to describe such a dark and humble flower, but Milton had doubtless at some time been on his knees in a field of violets. He knew that when we get down low enough, close enough to see the sunlight streaming through its petals, the violet does literally glow with an almost holy light. And so it is that when, chastened and humbled by the valley experience, we come close enough to the divine humility of Christ, we glimpse the sacred light which brightened Jesus' pathway through the valley, and will brighten ours, if we will but let it, with a radiance transcending that of the fairest earthly dawn.
