The Cultivated Soil

ELFRIEDE EBBINGHAUS

It can be readily understood that those who have become acquainted with Christian Science and have thereby experienced the healing power of Truth, would wish to acquaint their suffering fellow-men with the source of such good. Often they cannot understand why people who long for something better should refuse to follow what Christian Science has shown to be the only practical and right way. This indifference, sometimes even amounting to resistance to Truth, is not merely a sign of our own times. Since the beginning of time it has seemed to be in evidence. The great Teacher experienced it, he who so well knew what the cause of this resistance claimed to be.

By the parable of the sower Jesus taught that the soil (human consciousness) must have been previously cultivated in some degree in order to be able to receive spiritual truth. In a hard, uncultivated soil the seed will not take root and spring up. One whose consciousness is filled with the beliefs and false images of mortal sense, and who is satisfied with a concept of existence which attributes life and substance to matter, is not responsive to the truth which declares God, Mind, Spirit, to be the only Life, the only Being. Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 201): "We cannot fill vessels already full. They must first be emptied." It would not be wise, in such a case, to try to force anything. For this reason, Jesus admonished his disciples, "Whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet."

The farmer plows and otherwise prepares his field in order that the seed may spring up. Human consciousness must also be prepared to receive the truth. As long as it finds satisfaction in the world of material deception, it will remain blind to spiritual good, because it is accepting something entirely false. Such are deaf; so that, as Jesus said, "hearing they hear not, neither do they understand." It is different, however, with those whose belief of life in matter has been shaken through an understanding of the allness of Spirit; who no longer feel at ease in material pleasures; who have learned that the world cannot give them happiness or torture them with pain, cannot offer them true peace; and that material means are utterly inadequate to free them from sin, sickness, pain, and sorrow. Mrs. Eddy says on page 2 of Science and Health, "The desire which goes forth hungering after righteousness is blessed of our Father, and it does not return unto us void." Our Master calls "blessed" those who "hunger and thirst after righteousness," and promises that "they shall be filled."

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