Article March 5, 1910 Issue

SOWING THE SEED

M. LOUISE BAUM.

The beneficiary of Christian Science has only to look back to his own beginnings in this Science to understand the point of view of the newcomer. He knows that secretly, under all the restless seeking for earthly comfort and joy, there was in himself an unsatisfied heart that wanted to understand the real meaning of life. He was brought to Truth by this impulse to find out what life was and what it was worth, what it held for him, why he was put under certain conditions, and how he could reach that state of peace and satisfaction which he instinctively knew to be the normal and right thing for man. At that time he might not have phrased this to himself just so; he might have denied it had any one so interpreted his desires to him; but his more mature sense of himself shows him what was at work in the infancy of his search for God. The babe crying for food does not know what, humanly speaking, that cry involves,—the impulse to grow and to have his share in the great human experience. So the nascent thought, turning to something outside matter for relief and healing, may not know it is God for which it cries, but afterward it understands.

A patient in Christian Science, a man of the people who seemed not to have much capacity for spiritual understanding, once insisted on seeking a different practitioner, rather against the advice of his friends. Afterward he explained his attitude thus: "The other practitioner never talked to me about anything but politics; this man talks to me about God. That is what I go to him for. I cannot talk about such things myself, and perhaps because I am silent he may think I do not hear; but I do. I understand much that is said to me, and it is what I wish to hear." It is this "cup of cold water," given in the spirit of Love, that Christian Scientists everywhere are offering to the people, who are often more grateful than one can dream. Even if there is no outward expression of gratitude, nearly every man is inwardly proud to have another assume that he cares for spiritual things, for something better than materialism.

A lady on her way to a little Christian Science meeting in a foreign city, met another lady, who stopped to chat and incidentally mentioned the trouble she was having with her throat. The first one was meantime seeking to know if she might properly speak to her friend of Christian Science,—for if one asks for leading at such moments, one is given the right thing to say. She found herself replying that she had herself been used to have a like trouble, but had been free from it for five years. The sufferer cried, "Tell me what you did for it." Then the answer was easy. The healing work of Science was declared, the speaker told her friend that she was on her way to a Science service, and the invitation to go with her was eagerly accepted. The visitor was deeply impressed with the love and peace she felt in this little gathering in an "upper room" of the strange city. She put herself at once under treatment, and two weeks later was entirely free from a throat trouble of months' standing, for which she had had the best efforts of specialists. She had also become a beamingly happy student of Christian Science. Here is another illustration of how receptive hearts are everywhere waiting for the word of Truth.

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