Article December 25, 1920 Issue

"The fruit of their thoughts"

MARTIN WACHS

Paul , in his epistle to the Galatians, admonished them as follows: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." Might not this passage be properly interpreted to mean that we either receive or fail to receive our reward according to what we accept as consciousness, as Mind, God? Then it must be plainly evident that a right understanding of God and His infinite idea, man, is all that really may be gained,—all that is worth while seeking for. In other words, it is the only means by which mankind can hope to gain a present realization of the kingdom of God, which Jesus explicitly said was within us, and so prove the truth of the statement that we are even as we think that we are.

James brings out much the same thought, though perhaps in a very different way, when he asks, "Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs?" Can evil be the product of good; God, or Spirit, be the author and maintainer of matter, the absolute antithesis of Spirit? These, as well as many other pertinent questions, which the world has anxiously awaited a satisfying answer for, are daily being made demonstrably evident through the study and application of Christian Science. In fact, if the world but knew it, they were all answered over nineteen centuries ago by Christ Jesus. The message and mission of Christian Science is precisely the same as that of the Master. To all men, and for all time, it brings to view "the tree of life," whose blessed leaves are and will ever be "for the healing of the nations" from all the fruitage of corruption. It interprets God and His unerring law of eternal good so plainly that all may demonstrate that "a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. ... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." It enables the students of divine metaphysics to prove that because God is good and omnipresent, and His idea, man, is ever one with Him as spiritual creation, that perfection is expressed everywhere and at all times, in spite of any so-called evidence to the contrary.

What, it may be asked, do the writers in the Bible mean when they speak of fruit? Even that "whose seed is in itself." The tree and vine are both used many times in the Bible to denote work, activity, wisdom, understanding, health, unfoldment, aspiration, the church triumphant, pure and undefiled religion, even the idea of Principle, the church of Mind. Their fruit is the gain or increase, the result of eternal unfoldment, even the effect which results from the activity of right thinking. As there can be no effect without cause, so there can be no thinking without Mind, God. All true thought is Mind expressed, and Mind is God. Then the only true fruit that there can ever be is the effect of divine Principle, the fruit of Spirit. The human mind, by an inevitable perversion, would try to simulate the real and spiritual, and so it is that the world perceives as fruit the gross product of materiality, even matter. This, of course, is what the Bible calls the fruit "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," the fruit of corruption, the very opposite of the fruit of "the tree of life." It is the eating of this forbidden fruit which results in every form of evil, sin, disease, and death. The fruit of Spirit, on the other hand, "is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." This is why the Godlike man is compared to "a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season;" whose "leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper."

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