Article July 4, 1925 Issue

The Field of Thought

CHARLOTTE RUTH DECKER

On page 463 of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, we find it written, "A spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive." This has been very helpful to the writer in enabling her to understand Jesus' parable of the tares and the wheat. In the parable it is narrated that a field was carefully sown in grain by its owner, and that later tares or weeds were found growing among the wheat. The caretakers on discovering them asked if they should pull up the tares at once, but were directed to let all grow together until the harvest, when the separation could be made without danger of injuring or uprooting the good grain.

When questioned by his disciples concerning the meaning of this parable, Jesus likened the sower to "the Son of man," the wheat to "the children of the kingdom," the tares to "the children of the wicked one," the field to "the world," and the reapers to "the angels." He also likened the harvest to "the end of the world." We know that Christ Jesus himself was "the Son of man" sowing the seed of Truth in the field of human consciousness,—the truth about "the children of the kingdom," about the reality of spiritual man. Mrs. Eddy has defined "man" in the Glossary of Science and Health (p. 591), as follows: "The compound idea of infinite Spirit; the spiritual image and likeness of God; the full representation of Mind." And Christ Jesus said of man, "The kingdom of God is within you." The tares, or "children of the wicked one," being the opposite of this truth, must be the lie that man is created materially, having a mind both good and evil.

The evil crop was sown in human consciousness, so the parable states, "while men slept." Even to-day, while we are asleep spiritually and thought is diverted from contemplation of God and of man as he is in Truth, by the dream of material sense, the seeds of error seem to gain entrance and germinate unseen. It is not usually difficult to see the more flagrant tares, against which we are warned so repeatedly in the Bible. They seem to make us a great deal of trouble; but with earnest desire to exterminate them, we may, through the study of the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, see their false pretense to reality. Man will then begin to appear to us as he truly is, having "not a single element of error;" and this truth will remove these tares properly.

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