Article May 7, 1904 Issue

The Tree and its Fruit

BLANCHE H. HOGUE.

One of the clearest lessons taught by the Master is that of the tree and its fruit. Simply and directly he said, "Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit;" and his query, "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" defines clearly the impossibility of an effect being unlike its cause. The fact that like produces like, and that an effect must, by reason of inevitable law, manifest the nature of its cause, obtains just as surely in mental and moral matters as in the physical realm.

The fruit of a good tree cannot be other than good, under normal conditions of growth and fruitage, and in like manner the fruit of a good life bears witness to the soundness of its roots and the sweetness of its heart. That which is wholesome in origin and nature, will be fair and attractive to its utmost development.

The world has always accepted this truism, and men's lives have borne much good fruit from the sturdy mental integrity of their ideals; but it has remained for Christian Science to discover that there is no thought so unimportant but that it externalizes itself "after his kind." The thinking is, primarily, the man. Individuality is determined by the differences in the qualities and modes of thought which distinguish one mortal from another. It is well understood that thought precedes all voluntary action. Christian Science has penetrated mental conditions to the discovery that thought is the antecedent of all involuntary action, as well. The student learns that he is not at the mercy of a material body governed by laws dealing with matter as a thing wholly apart from thought, but that because matter is, of itself, nothing but "a thing of thought," governed always by thought, it must be, as phenomenon, subject to the changes of thought. The student is further instructed that it is the relinquishment of wrong thinking and the adoption of the "precept upon precept, line upon line;" of that "Mind which was in Christ Jesus," which brings better conditions into the phenomenon.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

The Tree and its Fruit

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access