Article January 6, 1917 Issue

Growth and Environment

NELLIE H. MATTHEWS

In the spring the writer bought and planted in a flower bed several dahlia bulbs. The season was late and the dahlias seemed slow in starting, but one day she saw that one of the bulbs had put up a shoot, though a careless foot had stepped upon it and broken it off at the ground. She decided that the bulbs must have been defective in some way and paid no more attention to them. One morning a little later she noticed that tiny morning-glory vines had covered the bed, and soon each morning with the rising sun the blossoms were radiant in their robes of blue, white, and red.

In the early fall as she looked out of the window she thought she saw a stranger among the blossoms and went to investigate. To her surprise she found a pink dahlia lifting its head just above the vines. A few days later another one appeared, a red one this time. The vines had formed a network over the bed, but on pushing them away she found that the dahlias had grown for about two feet lying on the ground, and then had lifted their heads and grown above the vines out into the sunlight. When a dahlia was picked a morning-glory was found twined around it, looking as though they had both grown on one stem.

This gave the writer such a beautiful lesson that she wanted to pass it on to others. It spoke to her of the experience of some students who seem to be longer than others in getting into the light of Truth, but who work on, knowing that "progress is the law of God" and that "growth is the eternal mandate of Mind" (Science and Health, pp. 233, 520); who are willing to let others reap the reward of their own labor and growth, and like the dahlia grow unnoticed until the time of fruitage comes, when their thoughts are lifted above their environment and they push outward and upward. They have gained humility through overcoming, and have a beauty unknown to mortals but recognized by our heavenly Father, divine Love.

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