Article March 15, 1924 Issue

"His leaf also shall not wither"

FRANCES A. HALDANE

The falling of the leaves in the autumn is generally associated with a sense of loss; and more particularly so where those varieties of trees grow in which the change is rapidly accomplished. One day they are green and flourishing; in a short time, if sudden frosts and winds come, the reddened leaves flutter quietly down, making a gay and rustling carpet until covered by the snow.

During one winter the writer's window overlooked a grove of oak trees, some of which had retained their golden brown leaves all through the cold weather. They had been very beautiful in mellow coloring when catching the golden shafts of sunshine, and served to relieve the bareness which would otherwise have seemed present. As she watched them, the thought came more clearly than ever before that the fading leaf is but typical of the drying up and putting off of some mortal belief, to make room for a fresh manifestation of thought. There is no loss involved; for the new is always there to unfold, even though there may seem to be delay. Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 452), "When outgrowing the old, you should not fear to put on the new."

Following this line of thought beyond material we realize that the spiritual idea always manifests perfection and is not subject to these variations. It is always at the point of perfection, whatever sense-testimony may aver. Spiritual substance and expression are unchangeable, unvarying, though unseen to the material senses. Mrs. Eddy writes on page 78 of Science and Health: "The decaying flower, the blighted bud, the gnarled oak, the ferocious beast,—like the discords of disease, sin, and death,—are unnatural. They are falsities of sense, the changing deflections of mortal mind; they are not the eternal realities of Mind."

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Nothing could be more permanent than Christian Science
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