Article January 14, 1911 Issue

PERSEVERANCE

MABEL S. THOMSON

In furnishing a house, how charming it is to dwell upon the finishing touches which make the drawing-room a thing of beauty, which give such character to the library that every one who looks in exclaims, "Here is a room where I could read in comfort!" But, alas! experience has taught that no matter how artistically furnished the home may be, it is by no means satisfactory if the kitchen stove be out of order; no amount of embroidered cushions in the drawing-room will make up for a deficiency of hot water in the bathroom.

It is much the same with character; the essentials lie, not in the graces of speech or the perfection of manners or accomplishments, useful though these be in their right place, but in the common virtues of patience, humility, perseverance. The importance of the last of these qualities in the practice of Christian Science cannot be overrated, and no one can tell how many times the student has failed to gather the full fruition of his work, just through this lack at the eleventh hour. "Let us not be weary in well doing," says the apostle, "for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." The trouble with so many of us seems to be that we think the "due season" must be the moment we begin to do our necessary work, forgetting that possibly the trouble may have arisen just through lack of fidelity in the past, and that before we can reap we must have sown. In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 127), our Leader reminds us that we only gain the blessing when the heart is "conformed to a fitness to receive the answer to its desire," and in Science and Health (p. 462), we read that"selfdenial, sincerity, Christianity, and persistence alone win the prize."

Among the heroes of the Bible stories there are many examples of perseverance and of the lack of it, with the corresponding results. Abraham, who in the Glossary in Science and Health stands for fidelity, seems to have possessed the quality of perseverance in a marked degree. Moses, on the other hand, at a critical moment failed to persevere in the well-doing which had distinguished him, and falling under an impulse of the human will he lost his right of entrance into the promised land. Peter, of course, is another notable instance of the lack of perseverance, and so in a moment of extreme fear he began to sink; whereas, perseverance would surely have enabled him to reach the place where his Master stood, dominating the waves. Again, in the garden of Gethsemane, there was a lamentable lack of persistence among the apostles, every one of them failing to watch even the "one hour" the Master had asked, while he alone "held uncomplaining guard over a world" (Science and Health, p. 48).

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