A LITTLE SERMON

NANCY E. WHITE.

Shakespeare has said that there are "sermons in stones and good in everything;" and the writer recently found such a sermon while witnessing an amateur baseball game in a vacant lot. The game was between seemingly ill matched teams, and the smaller boys lost from the start. They were evidently the better players, but the size of their opponents overshadowed their own conscious ability, and right here the sermon began. Does not any problem we have, mental or physical, seem, at least at first glance, to be bigger than we are? Would it be a problem otherwise? And is not our confusion and fear liable to be in proportion to the seeming size of our opponent?

After a while, a man from a neighboring clubhouse came out and began to take an interest in the game. He was good at heart, for he chose to support the little fellows. As each one came to the bat, the man would tell him not to be afraid; to brace up and play his best, and he could win. The effect on the boys was remarkable. Their faces lost the anxious look; their bodies the tenseness of fear, and their eyes began to look for success instead of defeat. In seeking an explanation of this change, there came these words of Mrs. Eddy: "Always begin your treatment by allaying the fear of patients;" also these: "The moral and spiritual facts of health, whispered into thought, produce very direct and marked effects on the body" (Science and Health, pp. 411, 370).

As the game progressed, our friend coached the boys to be in obedience to the rules of the game, as we must be to the rules of right thinking. When the little fellows would get too anxious, and strike at balls, he would say, "Steady! Steady! Just wait and watch him. He'll come to you. He'll come to you." The prophecy came true much oftener than it failed. The "Steady! Steady!" recalled the Master's admonition, "Lo, I am with you alway." The "He'll come to you" was, "He shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them." This recalled the words of our Leader, in "Miscellaneous Writings": "To strike out right and left against the mist, never clears the vision; but to lift your head above it, is a sovereign panacea" (p. 355). After a while the little boys began to win steadily; and, in spite of the noise and bluffing of their opponents, won the hotly contested game. There were two good reasons for this. One was the good coach they had. The other was that they had paid the price (good, honest practice in the effort to play a winning game) before they came to this test.

In our seemingly continuous struggle with ignorance (error) in our daily lives, there is a marked similarity to this ball game. Suppose for the boys there had been no beginning to play catch, when there was more muffing and explaining than catching; suppose they had never ventured on "one old cat," or dared "scrub," until they could begin to play in some real game. No need to say that they would never have been able to bear even a modest part in this game. They could have watched games, and heard experts explain how and why until doomsday, without there being any manifestation of actual knowledge in them.

How about us? Are we sitting in the grand-stand, watching and admiring the beauty and science of the game as some one else plays it? If so, are we not asleep to one of the strongest points brought out in this little ball game: that each boy, however humble his special part, was obliged, at certain stages of the game, to come to the bat—to stand there alone and prove what he could do? The Bible says, "And they shall all know me." Our Leader explains, "Every mortal must learn that there is neither power nor reality in evil" (Science and Health, p. 186). We may postpone the time; but we are only temporizing, and sometime will find ourselves alone with the foe, with only what we have proven to sustain us.

Why not begin now, in our own private grounds, our own consciousness, where none but the All-loving can see, to try to catch and send back some of error's balls, though we do muff most of them at first? We have perfect rules in the Bible; a skilled teacher and coach in our text-book, Science and Health, and our periodicals are full of supplementary help. There is no excuse for the humblest to hesitate. We need not be dismayed by the brilliant player. He can never practise for us; and he will tell us that he once began in his private grounds, and that the game was quite one-sided at first. He will probably add, as extra encouragement, that he still practises in that same place. "Today is the day of salvation."

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