There is a sentence on page 7 of "Unity of Good" by Mary Baker Eddy which has inspired and encouraged many a student of Christian Science. There she speaks of her conviction "that an acknowledgment of the perfection of the infinite Unseen confers a power nothing else can." This perfectness and reality of God is the grand incentive in Christian Science, the "fountain light of all our day." The longing of the human heart for something more permanent and satisfying than a matter world, which, as its finite nature shows, is obviously imperfect and inconsistent, was answered by some of the pioneers and builders of the Old Testament who, listening for God's voice, became leaders and counselors of the people, working in some measure "according to the pattern shewed to [them] in the mount" (Hebr. 8:5). God's plan, or pattern, for His children is infinite perfection now and forever, but humanly we think of it more as an ideal toward which we should strive until our lives come more and more into harmony with that ideal.
This perfect pattern—exact, precious, in line with divine Science—was revealed to Moses on the mount of vision. Not only was it preserved by him in the Ten Commandments, which were the highest concept of divine law that the children of Israel could grasp and assimilate, but it was evidenced through the idea of Church beginning to take shape in human consciousness. The plan to build a temporary and movable tabernacle in the wilderness was part of its manifestation and was accepted joyfully by the Israelites. Men and women alike were imbued with the strength and beauty of the idea, which was imparted to them by their leader and which included something that they could understand and act on immediately, to wit, the building of a holy habitation for the Lord their God and a place of prayer and worship for themselves.
What Moses had glimpsed of the heavenly pattern must have been very close to his heart or he could not have coped so long and so patiently with the sins and vagaries of the children of Israel. Those "Thou shalt not" laws were thundered at the people through many weary years of wandering in the wilderness, and even afterward, before they and their descendants approached the mental state in which the Christ-way, the positive law of "Thou shalt love," could dawn upon them. On page 200 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy says, "Moses advanced a nation to the worship of God in Spirit instead of matter, and illustrated the grand human capacities of being bestowed by immortal Mind."
