Article December 23, 1916 Issue

Spiritual Law and Growth

THURLENE I. WADSWORTH

In the transitional stage of thought through which we as mortals pass in our growth out of a material sense of existence into the spiritual understanding of what constitutes our true selfhood, there are many helpful lessons to be learned when once the eye of faith is open to the ever active, omnipresent operation of the law of good in our daily affairs. A recent lesson brought to me such an illumination of spiritual understanding that I desire to give it out in the hope that it may help others.

Early in the fall it became necessary to separate into three sections a plant of the common ribbon-grass variety, the roots of which had become pot-bound. So far as it was possible the division was a fair and equal one, each part being planted in the same kind of soil and the same kind of flower pot. One plant was placed in a sunny bay-window, where it was regularly watered and where the bright sunlight coaxed it into an immediate response. The other two were carried to a third floor room where the light was poor, where the plants were frequently chilled, and where water was not always supplied when needed.

One day it dawned upon me that these three plants were unfolding to my consciousness a symbolical expression of the action of Truth in human consciousness. They typified three expressions of mortal thought, in each of which was the possibility of perfect unfoldment toward a spiritual ideal. In each case the soil was good, but the conditions under which each had to unfold were very different. In the one case the growth was quick and spontaneous. That thought which has awakened to the Christ-ideal and is alert to the necessity of guarding and protecting it from the mortal conditions which would chill and starve it, will see that this budding, upspringing plant, this tender, newly awakened desire for godlikeness, is kept in the warmth and light of divine Love, is given that water of which if a man drink he shall never thirst again. Under these life-giving conditions growth will be as symmetrical and normal in human experience as in that of the plant. Those students of Christian Science who have been fortunate enough to take their first steps in an environment which fosters and nourishes every right effort, usually give the same evidence of rapid and beautiful growth as did the first plant.

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