Editorial September 17, 1910 Issue

GROWTH

Annie M. Knott

When we look about us at this season of the year and behold the rich and rare colors of the early autumn as reflected by fruit and flower, we may well pause to consider the significant statement of our text-book, "that God creates all through Mind, not through matter,—that the plant grows, not because of seed or soil, but because growth is the eternal mandate of Mind" (Science and Health, p. 520). Of late years this fact has been finding expression not only in the depths of spiritually awakened thought, but in the outward world as well. No longer do we bow submissively before the long accepted belief that winter's stormy blasts can deprive us of the things that abound in the summer time, unless we bring them from the genial tropics, but instead we see evidences of the universal operation of the law of growth, which is the same everywhere that its conditions are complied with, no matter how faintly we may discern its ceaseless activity.

In Christian Science, however, we are most deeply concerned with the law of growth as we are conscious of its operation in ourselves or in others who have been awakened to the truth of being. In many cases the soil into which the seed of Truth is dropped appears to be very poor indeed; there is ofttimes a stony substratum of solidified belief in disease, heredity, etc., thinly covered over by a belief in material remedies and asserted health laws; yet, in spite of these unpromising conditions, we soon find wonderful evidences of the operation of the spiritual law of growth. This is explained by our revered Leader where she says, "Leaving the seed of Truth to its own vitality, it propagates: the tares cannot hinder it. Our Master said, 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away;' and Jesus' faith in Truth must not exceed that of Christian Scientists who prove its power to be immortal" (Miscellaneous Writings. p. 111).

It is quite true that under present human conditions seems necessary to prepare the soil of human thought as well as the soil into which we drop seed for a material harvest, but in the case of the former the all important thing is to know the vitality of Truth's idea and depend upon it to crowd out that which has not its origin in the divine Mind. Christ Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven to a grain of mustard seed, which he said was "the least of all seeds;" yet he declared that from this seed there came a tree in which the birds of the air lodged. Thus it comes that a little word of truth is dropped into the consciousness of some one who may be hopelessly ill, according to mortal belief,—"nothing to build upon," is the verdict of materia medica; but the spiritual law of growth begins to be felt in its mighty operations, and as a result the belief in disease, which is no part of man's being, gives place to the eternal fact that man lives because God is his Life, and because health and holiness are his normal rightful condition.

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