Editorial May 10, 1913 Issue

"THE ENGRAFTED WORD"

John B. Willis

Every thoughtful husbandman lives with the poets, past and present, in wonderland, and in all his copartnerships with nature he is never more impressively reminded of his high calling than when, scions and grafting tools in hand, he opens new channels for the burgeoning life of the spring-awakened trees. It is a creative task, for he introduces a new control of resources, accomplished by virture of the long since discovered fact that the shaping secret of the tree, the enthronement of its individuality, is found not in the roots, the trunk, or the branches, but in the bud. This is the seat of sovereignty, and all things are subject thereto. Here the kind and quality of the fruit is determined, even as we have come to see anew in Christian Science that the outcome of one's life-activities is foreformed by his dominant idea.

Men having the same environment, endowment, opportunity, and capacity, effect ofttimes the most surprisingly varied results, because of the differences of their habitual thought; and St. James surely had this rule of the bud and of the right idea in mind when he wrote of "the engrafted word" which is able to save human sense. Every individual life is the history of a conquering concept, the expression and embodiment of a prejudice or a conviction. If our sense of things is false, we are enslaved and barren; if true, we are made free and fruitful. This is the epitome of the Master's message. He said, "If ... thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light, but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness." The figure is variant, the teaching is one, namely, that character and conduct are shaped by the right or wrong idea we entertain. All our works are cast in a mental mold.

The wild crab tree of the pasture may be well rooted and of strong, vigorous growth, but its thrift is wholly profitless until it becomes subject to the gentle but efficient sway of an engrafted bud. Then there is a great transformation; capacity is now devoted to a worthy product, and there results a blessing and a delight. How often one meets with correspondingly splendid resources among men, which have hitherto borne only gnarled and worthless fruit. Not a few of great energy and vigor, of application and industry, of culture and imagination, of enthusiasm and good cheer, yield no real values, make no distinct or lasting contributions to the betterment of mankind, the uplift of common thought, the correction of common stumblings, the increase of the general good, because they are subject to an unworthy sense, are not idealists.

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