Article January 25, 1913 Issue

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

VERA G. CHISHOLM.

Upon being asked to teach the ten commandments to a class of little ones in the Sunday school, I felt the need of studying these commandments very thoroughly myself, that I might be able to get the spiritual as well as the literal meaning of the laws. One evening during the week following the first Sunday, I was troubled a great deal with a bad cold in the head. I breathed with difficulty, but was indifferent to the physical condition, as I knew that it was only a temporary sense.

After reading over the Lesson-Sermon, however, I chanced to take up the commandments again, and read the first; then I came to the second. What did it mean! "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image." What was a graven image in this day and age? I read on: "or any likeness of any thing that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." I again read: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is ... in the earth beneath." What was in the earth beneath? Why, sin, disease, and death; colds, for instance. It is common for mortals to have colds, and so I was imaging a cold, expressing something that is of the nature and quality of error,—believing it and bowing down to it and serving it.

Here was my answer, and I saw the truth so clearly that the inflammation and congestion gradually left, but so that I could feel it go, just as a mist rolls away; and the next day I was free. So much for my first week in trying to teach, demonstrate, and live the ten commandments.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

"SEEDTIME AND HARVEST"