The experience of climbing a mountain is often used as a comparison for the journey "from sense to Soul...from mist and shadow into Truth's clear day" (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 64). Mounting above the mists of sense, we ascend from the valley of pleasure-seeking in matter, with its disillusion and limitation, to the glorious heights of joyous activity and boundless freedom.
That state of thought which is buried in matter, deceived by both mortal mind's pain and its pleasure, and is unwilling to take the journey heavenward, will find that eventually, either through Christian Science or through suffering, progress out of materiality will be forced upon it. For us let it be through Science that we ascend the mountain where, as the prophet states (Isa. 25:7), God "will destroy...the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations." Are not the veil and the covering the mist that went up from the earth to hide the perfect Father-Mother, God, and His child? When this veil is destroyed, we clearly discern that man has been and is forever the image and likeness of God. We learn that Life is God; that man's environment is the kingdom of heaven, man's companions are the lovely ideas of God Himself, and man's work is the joyous reflection and expression of all good.
At first the ascending path is easy, the slope gentle, and we are full of joy and vigor to go forward and receive more and yet more of this glorious truth of being which has dawned in our consciousness.
