"WHAT MEAN THESE STONES?"

The third and fourth chapters of Joshua present a proof of the presence of God in the experience of the children of Israel in their passage from the land of bondage to that of promise. Proof after proof had been given them,—deliverance, food, water, protection, the law of God in the Ten Commandments. As they neared Jericho, the ark of God was to be borne by the priests; and Joshua, inspired as Moses had been with confidence in God's direction, had said that as the feet of the priests touched the waters of the Jordan, the waters would part, and a passage could be made upon dry ground.

Then, as the people crossed this Jordan (called by one commentary "the river of judgment''), Joshua was told by the Lord to choose twelve men, representatives of their twelve tribes, who should select, from the place where the feet of the priests stood firm, twelve stones, and carry them to the place where they were to lodge. "And those twelve stones, which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch in Gilgal." Then Joshua said to the people: "When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saving. What mean these stones? Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land." So it was for the children that this memorial was set up, a memorial of the power of God, of His care and tenderness for His children; not that those who had passed through this experience would forget, but that future generations might see and reverence, that they, too, might be encouraged and strengthened when the waters before them seemed impassable.

The day comes when these children of Israel are followed by the second and third generations, who in turn begin their progress Soulward. These have not served in Egypt; they have experienced nothing of the cruel treatment of the taskmasters who flayed and beat their parents, nothing of the cruel tyranny of material sense when it seems to have been victorious. These younger children have, perchance, seen the marks of the cruel stripe when some mother in Israel, to have her loved child see and learn from her own deep experience the price to be paid for servitude to matter, has endeavored to show that one the misery of Egyptian bondage; but with rosy hopes and buoyant expectations the child of the second or third generation of those who toiled long to emerge from darkest error, may joyously and confidently, albeit lovingly, say to such a mother: "Ah, but I will not have to become a slave! I know that God is good; for you have taught me so. All the world is full of joy and promise for me, because you have opened the way.''' So he may fare forth, with a heart of fervent prayer. The mother waits. God's grace must be sufficient for this dear one. Will the tender counsel, the memory of the many proofs of God's care, stay the pressure of temptation to this untried, trusting heart? She would save him, if she could, from learning by experience; but she finds that no two, however tender their relationship, can take the same steps Soulward; each must work out for himself this precious progress.

To this child come temptations,— the love of popularity, the lure of the things of sense, the imposing spectacle of the seeming power of wealth, the seductions of sensualism in all their myriad phases. Now comes the struggle, with perchance a stumble. "Is not God good?" he cries. "Why should I have had this humiliating experience? The world is not so sweet as I had thought." Disappointed and less self-assertive, he looks back with humility to the mother who would have shown him the way. Then the humbled thought is directed to the memorial, to the twelve stones taken from "the river of judgment." This child, now a pilgrim, sees the waters before him. Will he part them, as did the priests of old, by knowing himself the immortal idea of God, strong against temptation, satisfied with God's love; or will he plunge into "the river of judgment" without restraint, strength, or power, to be tossed hither and yon by its relentless current?

Does the mother yearn to place this memorial so deep in the heart of her children that the wonder of Soul may be sufficient for them? Her heart echoes the words of our Leader, who loved and prayed for all the world: "Should not the loving warning, the far-seeing wisdom, the gentle entreaty, the stern rebuke have been heeded, in return for all that love which brooded tireless over their tender years?" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 254). She remembers, too, what our Leader also says in the Christian Science textbook. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 454): "Love inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way." Can she do more than know this,—know it for herself, for her own peace,—and leave the rest with Him who knoweth best? The mother's prayer can never reach a more sublime height than did that of Jesus: "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil." All must learn the simplicity, sweetness, and surety of being led by Immanuel, or "God with us," as was our beloved Leader.

She, our Leader in Israel, fording "the river of judgment," with God's right hand parting the waters, felt the firmament beneath her feet, saw the narrow path across, and trod this path alone, as our Master said each must. We can never know the agony or the glory of that lone passage. But as spiritual man was revealed to her, each step which carried the ark of Christian Science farther across the river of the world's thought was guided by divine intelligence, until the path was made secure for all the children of Israel, that they also might pass over this Jordan. There are the books which contain the entire published writings of Mary Baker Eddy, imperishable memorials to her pilgrim footsteps. These, with the Bible, are our guides, our waymarks, our bulwarks. She who trod this way alone, so loved others that she kept not for herself the wondrous revelation; but at each new step left counsel for us, which, if we will but heed it, will insure us safe passage, with firm, tried ground beneath us.

Can we look back to this lone pilgrim, whose eyes were lifted toward the light, in whose heart was ever the prayer, "Shepherd, show me how to go" (Poems, p. 14), without our hearts filling with gratitude that she knew "how to go," and led the way for us? Can we remember her life without consecrating our own lives more deeply, so to live that we may be worthy followers? Or do we pray to feed His sheep, and then, with eyes turned miserably toward Egypt, long for its fleshpots, forgetting the hard bondage error ever exacts? May our hearts echo the words of Kipling which are quoted in the Foreword to "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany,"

If we are reviled for our faith, we may remember how many who reviled yesterday, driven by woe to the foot of the cross, through the gentle ministrations of Christian Science have found healing there; and have joined with wondering thanks the paean of praise raised in gratitude to God for our Leader. So, when there comes to any Christian Scientist a hungering, sorrowing one, he can point to many memorials of healing; and thus reassure him. Perhaps, from that depth of gratitude which Christian Science has taught him, he will testify of his own healing, that his own feet had felt the dry ground beneath them, where once surging billows of error had seemed to be; or that, trusting not his own uncertain footing, his steps had been guided by some older pilgrim, surer of the firmament that divides the waters from the waters. But having passed over that Jordan on dry land, in his heart is erected that memorial which can assure the passing pilgrim that Love's guiding hand is able to bear him up and out, till he, too, can join the rejoicing ones.

The writer, one of the younger generation of Christian Scientists, looks back to her own healing as such a memorial, and sometimes speaks of it to others, when their healing seems slow; for God, who sent His Word and healed her, will as surely care for each and every one who seeks Him with selfless prayer. Science and Health (then in two volumes) had but entered our home as a guest, and was being eagerly, but secretly, read by my mother, when I was an infant. In those days, to mention healing by prayer was deemed fanaticism; to do without doctors and drugs, almost insanity. When, as a toddling babe, I fell and struck my head on the sharp window sill, the doctor's verdict was that the optic nerve was so badly injured that the left eye would become crossed, and, unless an operation were performed immediately, the other eye would become affected, so that, eventually, blindness would be the result. To the mother-heart, this was unendurable; so with what little faith and hope had been gleaned from her reading of our textbook, she refused to allow the operation. Gradually, medicines and doctors were banished from our home; but a few years later a severe testing time came. The doctor's prediction seemed to be fast coming true, as the left eye became badly crossed and the vision of the right eye was gradually lessening. I also became quite frail, so that when the scourge of a dread disease swept the small western town where we lived, passing lightly over the older children, it assumed a virulent form in my case. Many children under the care of the doctors passed away. But this one case aroused much attention, and antagonism; for, unknown to my parents, reports were made each day to a near-by hospital. In those pioneer days, Christian Science had not the recognition and respect it now commands. Its followers were few in the West; and my mother was threatened with the State Prison "if that child died without proper care." Those were dark days for the mother, her own health delicate, and faced, as she was, with family cares, antagonistic neighbors, and her own fears. When the disease had spent itself, it left me stone deaf. Three months the struggle continued, while every evidence of the senses was discouraging. I grew so frail that the journey from bed to a couch was made on a pillow. But the human mother continued to seek with ceaseless trust the infinite Mother-Love.

One night, when all hope seemed fled and life seemed ebbing away, the Bible, kept always close at hand, was opened, almost despairingly; and these words stood forth: "Rejoicing in hope." God's grace was proved sufficient; for in the morning the pitifully crossed eyes looked straight into the mother's, and the hearing was restored. A few years afterwards people would never have believed there had ever been a deficiency. Today I enjoy robust health; and my sight and hearing are unusually keen.

So, when we sing the hymn recounting Jesus' causing the blind to see and the deaf to hear, my gratitude goes out to God that to-day the same power that he used is with men, for I have the evidence in my own experience. "I know that my redeemer liveth," and hath caused me to live. One of the few memorials of the experience is a page of a worn, loose-leafed copy of the first edition of "Miscellaneous Writings," which contains "The Mother's Evening Prayer" (p. 389), where the stains of tears and childish fingers recall the times it was placed under my head when many duties claimed the mother's attention; for thus I would sleep, sure of the "gentle presence" I had been taught to find through that prayer.

Many years have passed since then, years of learning the love of God and the nothingness of what the world has to offer, with that memorial of God's tender love ever before me. Many times the Jordan of judgment has had to be forded; but God's hand was always there; and at each step I learned what it meant to have the way opened before me, and the privilege of the counsel of those gone before. As my healing stands before me a sacred memorial, so may their lives restored be a memorial to others. The words of a loved hymn are to me a continual inspiration to more consecrated effort:—

Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have. What you are will show in what you do.—Thomas Davidson.