Article April 29, 1911 Issue

THE STONES OF THE FIELD

HON. SUSAN HEBER PERCY.

How many of us have escaped the temptation to think and say that if only a certain difficulty in our outward circumstances were removed, we should get on so much better in Christian Science! Are not these the "stones" in our path which appear to make the journey hard, laborious, painful, and slow? A verse from the fifth chapter of Job which occurred in a recent Lesson-Sermon seemed most helpful in this respect. It reads, "For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field: and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee." It seems as if we must make friends, not enemies, of these hard places in our earthly experience, by meeting them with scientific right thinking. Jacob certainly understood this when at Bethel he "took of the stones of the place, and put them for his pillow," and there followed for him the most wonderful vision, or realization, of the allness and ever-presence of God, and he beheld the angels, which Mrs. Eddy tells us are "God's thoughts passing to man" (Science and Health, p. 581).

Those who have honestly striven to follow our Leader's instruction: "Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good" (Ibid., p. 393), have found that each honest effort has resulted in the discovery that the seeming obstructions have through the effort which they called forth become their best friends, providing an occasion for the effort and the victory; that with the victory comes a clearer vision of those angels which are always near us, though never seen so clearly as when we have been forced by outward circumstances to cling very closely to the Father's hand.

Moses traveled through the wilderness supported by Truth. In handling the serpent, error, under divine instruction, and proving its powerlessness, he found a staff on which to lean. So may we go forward with all courage, knowing that divine Love leadeth us "in the paths of righteousness" and that the seeming obstacles, the "stones," must of necessity, on our nearer approach, prove merely occasions for overcoming, or even resting-places where visions of glory may come to us.

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