Article February 17, 1923 Issue

An Olive Branch

CORA IZZARD

ON the cover of that wonderful little messenger, the Christian Science Quarterly, which brings to us so much food for daily thought, is the picture of an olive branch. What a wealth of meaning lies in that small design, symbolizing peace and healing! Could anything else represent more typically the soothing, healing messages of Truth and Love sent out into the world through our Lesson-Sermons, giving promise of the dawning of the new day, when all error shall have been wiped away? Only by the utmost consecration to the demonstration of Truth can we, as Christian Scientists, even begin to express sufficient gratitude to our dear Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, for the inspiration which she was pure enough to receive, and which gave to us our Lesson-Sermons. These authorized sermons from our impersonal preachers, the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," are carrying the message of hope and peace into all the world; the sick are being healed; the lepers cleansed; and the resurrection morn is breaking upon a world buried deep in its false beliefs of materiality.

At one time, when "the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and ... every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually," Noah alone was saved from the flood which covered the whole face of the earth. "To see if the waters were abated," Noah thrice sent forth a dove, which Mrs. Eddy defines in Science and Health (p. 584) as "a symbol of divine Science; purity and peace; hope and faith." But on the first occasion the dove returned, for she "found no rest for the sole of her foot." Into a world flooded with sin and sorrow came Jesus on his holy mission; and, behold, we find him saying, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." So he returned to "the ark,"—to his understanding of spiritual existence.

In the account of Noah it is further related that, after seven days, he again sent forth the dove, and when she returned, "Lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth." Nearly two thousand years after Jesus' advent upon earth, the dove again was sent forth, when Christian Science was given to the world; and lo, enough error had abated for the olive leaf to be plucked—for the message of peace and healing to be heard and understood. Noah kept the dove in the ark another "seven days," and then sent her forth, never to return. When the universal understanding of divine Science shall have dried up the sea of error, there will be no need of the ark as a refuge from the flood, for "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."

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