A Profitable Lesson

INEZ H. DABNEY

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

TENNYSON.

What sweet lessons unfold through the simple things of nature! While I was wandering one day in early spring through the woodlands, drinking in the unfoldment of things animate, listening to the babbling brook as it trickled over the mossy green pebbles, peering into the fern beds with their opening fronds, and searching for the first spring flowers, my eye was arrested by a glint of color. Pausing, I discovered a small bell-like flower with a sword of green extending above it. On examination, I discovered it had forced its way through several thicknesses of tough oak leaves, and stood, a miracle of beauty, above its prison walls. With its small but mighty sword it had patiently punctured the seeming obstruction, and stood in simple modesty above the sod in the happy sunlight, to carry a lesson of perseverance to a waiting heart. It recalled the words of the Master, "Consider the lilies how they grow;" also the words of Mrs. Eddy in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 153), "The sweet flowers should be to us His apostles, pointing away from matter and man up to the one source, divine Life and Love, in whom is all salvation from sin, disease, and death."

The same power that enabled the blossom to express itself in beauty above the difficulties which confronted it will, just as inevitably, enable each and every struggling heart to attain its freedom from the seeming entanglements of carnal beliefs. Therefore, in conformity with the teachings in our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 242), "in patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error,—self-will, self-justification, and self-love,—which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death." When the sweet fruits of Spirit are articulate to human consciousness, reflections of Love will illumine the darkness, healing sorrowing hearts and sick bodies.

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February 10, 1923

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