Why did Moses put a vail on his face? He had just come down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments and his face shown brightly. Was the vail for his benefit? Was he being modest? No. He was dealing with the fear of those around him who couldn't handle the brightness of the spiritual message he was carrying. He had just received a radical message from God that shook the Hebrews from a very bad place (mentally). Their materialism and human thinking was an impediment to their accepting this message, and it caused them to fear what they saw in Moses.
In the New Testament, Paul states that the vail was still over the reading of the old testament in his day, but that the vail was "done away in Christ." That same materialism and human thinking was causing the Hebrews of his time to fail to see the great spiritual message brought by Moses, and the Christ came through Jesus to lift that vail, and to bring about a higher spiritual understanding of God and man.
For centuries after, there was a vail over the Bible. The so-called Christian church translated it poorly and even insisted that it be read only in Latin, which most people could not understand. It remained a mystery full of fear and superstition for most of the world's population until Mary Baker Eddy wrote Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and unlocked the higher meaning of the Bible to mankind.
Today we sometimes talk about the vail that is over the Christian Science textbook. For me, this story of Moses is helpful in understanding what that vail is. This textbook is a radical explanation of the truth's in the New Testament, of Jesus' life and teachings. And, as in Moses' time, the materialism of the world today and popularity of human thinking puts a vail over the book. It's not what is in the book that creates the vail, but, rather, the fear of those who cannot handle the brightness of the great spiritual message the book contains. The book does not need to be changed or re-written into "modern" language. It needs only to be studied and judged on its merits as represented by the lives of those who truly live a Christianly scientific life.
We live in an exciting time and have a great opportunity before us to give to the world something it desperately needs - Soul.
It took me a while to warm up to this lesson, but it's a really good one. Many thanks to the writer.
