The Restraining Guide

And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying. This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.—Isaiah, 30:21.

The Master has left the assurance that the spiritual way is strait and narrow, and every disciple who starts to walk in it soon finds this assurance confirmed. It is simple direct; so plain that “the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.” It is only when we stop to consider some of the innumerable ways that diverge from the King’s highway, or when we may be beguiled into, heeding the suggestion of some guide who plans according to worldly ways and means, that there can or does come any complication or uncertainty. Then, when a confusion of thought or an errant impulse may succeed in diverting the pilgrim for a moment, there will surely be given some warning token that will be to him the guiding word, saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it.”

If the disciple is abiding close in the conscious presence of the guide, the consciousness of the spiritual idea that directs the way from sense to Soul, the guiding and restraining word will come as a spiritual impulse and intuition as a spiritual sense that at once restrains and directs, and thought will be corrected and rightly directed before it has been manifested in some mistaken word or deed. Thus to follow our guide will be to find the unerring direction of Science it will mean that every misleading thought or erring impulse will be discerned and destroyed before it has turned the Truth-seeker’s feet from the way; but if the wrong word is spoken, or the wrong deed is done, there will come the unerring rebuke. The warning voice will be heard and the disciple’s safety is in promptly heeding it.

It is noteworthy that this assurance of the restraining word is that it shall be heard “behind thee;” and it immediately follows a statement in the preceding verse that “thine eyes shall see thy teachers.” All through the Bible, in its promises and in its history, there is given the assurance of a guide to go before. This was given to the journeying Israelites as a pillar of cloud and fire, and an assurance that God’s angel should go before them to bring them into the place divinely chosen. The Discoverer of Christian Science has written,—”So shall the spiritual idea guide all right desires in their passage from sense to Soul, from a material sense of existence to the spiritual, up to the glory prepared for them who love God” (Science and Health, p. 566). The spiritual guide is always before. How, then, is it that the word shall be heard “behind thee”? It is not because our eyes shall not see our “teachers;” it is not because our spiritual guide shall be withdrawn, but that in turning to the right hand or to the left, in turning out of the way, the disciple has turned away from his “teachers,” has turned his back on his guide. Then, as restraint or rebuke, will come the “word” which will rectify the mistake.

If the disciple’s walk is close and clear enough in the presence of Truth, if thought is holding and abiding steadily and steadfastly in the consciousness of the spiritual idea, the gentle restraint will be given in the premonitory sense that tells him he is diverging from the way of harmony. If the disciple is blinded and diverted by a wayward impulse or obtuse belief, then the “word” will come as a strong rebuke, chastening and consuming the erring, sinning sense.

The Bible holds many a record of good men who in an unguarded hour went astray, and through gentle leading or through great tribulation found their way back into the way of peace. The night of futile effort on the Sea of Galilee, when the disciples toiled all its hours and caught nothing, marks one brief turning aside from a divine commission to a human resource to fill what seemed to be irksome idleness and waiting. The story of Jonah, whether fact or parable, is true in its moral, and marks the folly and disaster of attempting to evade a divine commission or shun a divine responsibility. David stands as a pre-eminent example of a great and good man who went astray in an evil hour, and who through great tribulation atoned for his error and gained again the pathway of peace. These are typical examples of the rebuke that chides and chastens the erring sense, the divine Word that will be heard as it is saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it.”

This divine Word is the spiritual idea that reveals and enunciates the divine law of being, the law that is written on the mind and graven on the heart of the spiritually illumined man. Every deviation from the way, however slight, means a conflict in human consciousness with the unchanging law of harmony; and the chiding or chastening that comes when a false step is taken comes as a necessary and legitimate result for violating the eternal order and fitness of things. There is an inevitable relation of cause and effect between the wrong thought or deed and the disturbance or suffering that follows. This is the law which requires that sin shall punish and destroy itself; and so in each erring experience the law brings its effective rebuke and restraint. It is a monitor, saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it.”

In the examples we have noted from sacred history the working of this law can be easily traced. The disciples, under the lead of the impetuous Peter, went fishing, apparently because they wanted to be doing something and had not learned to wait upon God,—to wait for the divine impulse and bidding that must come before success could crown any effort. It was evidently a wayward, human, impatient impulse that overtook Peter when he broke out, “I go a fishing,” and the other disciples when they followed. It was an effort that held no worthy purpose, no noble impulse, an effort that was a distinct turning away from the lofty ideal that had been given them, an endeavor that must go unrequited. Only when the Masters voice gives divine sanction and direction to their effort, and they accept this in a prompt obedience, is there a reward for their toil. Then follows the lesson on the shore, when it is made clear to “Peter what it is to mean if he proves that he loves his Master more than his fishing. So when Jonah flees, shrinking from the task laid upon him, it is to find that the obedience which is prompted by fear only leads into greater fear, and that in an unquestioning following of the divine direction is safety and peace.

So, too, David reaped the results of his sin with Bathsheba—results that followed him all through his further career. Nathan’s declaration that “the sword shall never depart from thine house” was a foreseeing and foretelling of the legitimate sequence of guilt. A crime had been carried out by others at David’s bidding, and its evil example and effects had gone out into relations that were beyond his recall. And it was without doubt in this train of influence that lay the impossibility of David’s ever bringing his reign up to a point where his dominion should be established in moral and spiritual supremacy and war should cease. David had come to the kingdom because he had a glimpse of the fact that God is the only power. From the time that he first comes into view as the stripling who overthrows Goliath without arms or armor, his whole career is that of one whose trust is in God and not in material resources. When he came to the kingdom, according to his understanding he utilized the resources at his hand, in overthrowing the enemies of Israel and in establishing his kingdom. We must remember that he was dealing with a people who were little more than beginning to emerge from the crudest beliefs of life, substance, intelligence, and power in matter, the belief of the necessity of physical force and war, the belief that formulates codes of vengeance and cruelty. With such mental conditions as these David had to deal,—conditions out of which he himself had only partly emerged. So it is not surprising that such a man as Joab should have come to the front as David’s lieutenant, the leader of his forces. Joab’s code taught him courage, belief in the divine authority of David’s kingship, and loyalty to that authority. These qualities, representing largely human belief rather than divine understanding, were nevertheless qualities which for a time were useful in overthrowing the grosser beliefs of unrighteousness abroad and disloyalty at home. But Joab had no vision of the ideal of David, an ideal that looked to the establishment of a kingdom whose power should be God, whose law should be righteousness and love.

So, if Israel were to be lifted up to a higher plane of consciousness, its leaders must be men whose ideals rose above warlike motives and methods, and it is not difficult to see what moral and spiritual ascendancy was needed by the ruler who was called to solve such a problem. It was evident that David had forfeited this spiritual supremacy. In his one sin David had lost the respect and confidence of every warlike follower, he had rudely violated the code of honor that should have bound him to every soldier of Israel. When Nathan declared to David that because of his sin the sword should never depart from his house, it must have been because upon the plane of human sense David had started a course of influences that would entail this by a relation of cause and effect, and these are some of the relations that seem to lie plainly on the surface in the record.

When David confessed his sin, he saw the folly and falsity of that which had led him astray, and as an element of his own consciousness the error was eliminated, forgiven; but the results of the wrong against another and the crime against moral order could not be thus lightly atoned. The sin in his own consciousness could be destroyed in one supreme moment of moral and spiritual awakening and renewal, but the removing of its results was a burden of travail for the years. It enforces what our Leader has enjoined in her article on Fidelity: “Carelessly or remorselessly thou mayest have sent along the ocean of events a wave that will sometime flood thy memory, surge dolefully at the door of conscience and pour forth the unavailing tear. . . . One backward step, one relinquishment of right in an evil hour, one faithless tarrying, has torn the laurel from many a brow, and repose from many a heart” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 339).

These instances are concrete examples of how the law of Truth works in its rebuke of the erring sense which turns the pilgrim from the spiritual way. In Christian Science we understand that every suffering which follows and must follow a misdeed is in fulfilment of the law that a man shall reap what he sows. It is not a special penalty pronounced by Deity, but a legitimate sequence of the error. A mistake must be seen to be a mistake, before it can be corrected; and it must be seen that the mistake will and does entail suffering and loss before mortals are willing to take the trouble to correct it. The primitive mistake is the belief in matter, the belief that here is life, substance, intelligence, good, apart from God. Mortals must come to see this mistake and then correct it; and this means correcting and eliminating a multitude of mistaken beliefs, judgments, and motives which have sprung from this one fundamental error. The way that leads out of these false beliefs, up to the understanding and demonstration of the allness of God, is the way in which we are given the promise of spiritual guidance.

Were the pilgrim wayfarer always spiritually awake, were the disciple always in possession of a clear spiritual sense, and if this sense were always faithfully followed, there would be no wandering from the way; every onward step would be in the line of divine harmony, freedom, dominion. Mankind in general have had to awaken to their mistakes by suffering for their mistakes. Even after the awakening which reveals the unreality of matter and its conditions, after the illumination that comes in discerning and acknowledging the allness of God, the disciple has a long upward way before he shall pass the hill-crest. There will be many a stage on the journey where he will have to learn that old beliefs which he had thought were entirely right and good hold an element of error. Again and again he will be warned and awakened to the nature of the subtle forms of sense-belief by the suffering which they entail. The way is necessarily an unerring walk in the line of spiritual understanding, or else an experience that drives us back to that way by the suffering, the chastisement, which waits upon every mistake, every sin.

The only safety is in steadfast watchfulness and prayer, an alert heeding of the monitions of our spiritual guide. The farther we journey on the way, the greater will be the interests involved, and the graver will be the consequences that will wait upon our acts; but every day’s progress likewise brings us into a clearer spiritual consciousness, where the awakened sense can with finer discrimination and greater certainty discern the way of Truth, and hear and heed the voice which says: “This is the way, walk ye in it.”