One who has experienced the joy of a pack trip to the higher mountain ranges knows what enchanting vistas are unfolded to the view. The grass, the flowers, the trees, the stars that one has known are there; but their loveliness is transmuted into a whole new world of beauty and majesty. There is a stillness in the higher ranges which is something more than absence of the noise and bustle of the world below. The quietude that waits on God is there.
A parallel may be drawn in the experience of one who has been healed in Christian Science of some bodily ill and goes on to unfold those qualities of Spirit, whose dawn in consciousness brought about the physical resuscitation. One's thought is illumined and one's experience is harmonized by the change in viewpoint through which such healing is accomplished. This harmony often satisfies the human sense, and one basks for a while in the new-found freedom which physical healing brings about.
But there comes a time when one is called upon to understand Mary Baker Eddy's meaning in her discussion of the question in "Rudimental Divine Science" (p. 2), "Is healing the sick the whole of Science?" Her answer is precise and unequivocal. It begins with these statements: "Healing physical sickness is the smallest part of Christian Science. It is only the bugle-call to thought and action, in the higher range of infinite goodness. The emphatic purpose of Christian Science is the healing of sin."
How, one may ask, is one to rise in thought and action to "the higher range" of which our Leader speaks? What may one expect in one's experience as one responds to "the bugle-call"? The answer to these questions may be found in our Leader's exposition of what she calls "the human and divine coincidence." She writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 561): "John saw the human and divine coincidence, shown in the man Jesus, as divinity embracing humanity in Life and its demonstration,—reducing to human perception and understanding the Life which is God. In divine revelation, material and corporeal selfhood disappear, and the spiritual idea is understood."
Christian Science teaches that the divine and human meet on the mount of revelation. Not in a far-off realm of metaphysical abstraction, but right where one seems to be in human experience, one finds the love of God manifested as a transforming power. Through the revelation of man's nature as wholly spiritual and sinless, one is released from the strain of human self-denial and experiences the glorious possibilities of spiritual self-expression. The embrace of divinity lifts one tenderly above the clamor of the senses and the trials of material life into "the higher range of infinite goodness."
In "Miscellaneous Writings," Mrs. Eddy describes what one may expect to find when one reaches this "higher range" (p. 100): "The spiritual monitor understood is coincidence of the divine with the human, the acme of Christian Science. Pure humanity, friendship, home, the interchange of love, bring to earth a foretaste of heaven. They unite terrestrial and celestial joys, and crown them with blessings infinite."
In "the higher range of infinite goodness" the "foretaste of heaven" is found. How often it is missed by those who seek it at some lower level!
One who has made the trek to the mountain heights knows how much is required in preparation, in careful planning of the route over the rocks and across the ridges, in scaling down the pack which is to be shouldered, and in the testing of one's strength to make the climb. To reach "the higher range of infinite goodness" calls for a consecrated preparation.
In planning one's trip to this "higher range," "the emphatic purpose of Christian Science" must be understood as relating to one's inmost thoughts and purposes. No lesser moral standard than that of the Sermon on the Mount can be permitted to govern one's life. Obedience to the thoushalt-nots of the Commandments must have led one to the blessed grace of the Beatitudes.
Pride must go down before humility. Mourning over one's injuries must change to regret for one's faults. Meekness must displace arrogance; criticism give way to compassion; human attachment to spiritual love. Peacemaking concepts of brotherhood and such mental states as hunger and thirst for good thoughts render one strong for the climb. The persecution of personal sense, as it is forced to give place to "infinite goodness," can be welcomed as proof that the summit is near. Christ Jesus said (Matt. 5:11, 12): "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven."
Those who reach "the higher range" are sometimes called upon to learn that "friendship, home, the interchange of love," do not always appear in the form which one may think that one desires. These tokens of divinity's embrace often take new forms as the course of human life calls for necessary adjustment.
A father, separated from his sons, found joy in the attachment of a neighbor's little boy while his wife looked on with bitterness at a relationship from which she seemed to be excluded. Endeavoring to hold her thinking in line with the Christ ideal, little by little the bitterness left her, and she was able to rejoice in her husband's happiness with his young companion.
One day, the little boy came running into her living room with a bunch of wild flowers in his hand. "These are for you," he said with a smile. The next day he popped in again, this time for a chat which he initiated with the statement: "Winter begins tomorrow!" This remark on a sunny autumn day in California needed explanation which was given in the information that "school begins tomorrow!"
Each day thereafter through the fall and winter months, the visits were continued, and the "friendship" and "interchange of love" between these two persisted far into the future for the woman and the boy whom she had met in "the higher range." Similar experiences come to those who give their time and thought to teaching the children in the Christian Science Sunday School, where unselfed love initiates friendships, which endure for many fruitful years.
In one's relations, not only with children but also with adults in their seemingly more difficult adjustments, the spiritual qualities which are unfolded in "the higher range of infinite goodness" work wonders in the harmonizing of human life. No one need fail to find the way; for the path has been charted by Jesus, and every step has been exemplified in his life on earth. "The human and divine coincidence, shown in the man Jesus," has been fully explained by our Leader, who has given the rules for its achievement and provided the necessary discipline within her Church.
Though the path over the rocks may not be easy, the reward is great for those who follow it. And all along the way are to be found companions who share with one another the joy of divinity's embrace!
