Article April 24, 1926 Issue

"In due season"

ALMA MARIE SWENSON

Does the naturalist in certain northern latitudes look abroad upon early April's brave efforts and meager attainments and exclaim disparagingly: "How few and small are the flowers to be found! The hillsides are bare. The trees have no leaves"? To look so early for and expect richer results in unfolding growth would be to demand the progress and fruitage which are not due until after many weeks more of sunshine and rain, not perhaps until after the month of May takes up the work. A gradual unfoldment and growth is the continuation of the small beginnings and awakenings of the almost wintry month of March.

Even though the signs of progress in greenness and growth be few, and perhaps slow, in one's early spring environment, surely no one can feel disappointed and dissatisfied, unless he foolishly compares the advancement in colder climes with that under southern skies and in warmer latitudes. One who measures justly the signs of progress from a recent winter, with its snow and ice, can experience nothing but hope and joy, and be filled with gratitude at sight of the humble flowers, the swelling leaf buds, the fringe of green along the marshes.

When do students of Christian Science feel discouraged and dissatisfied with themselves and the progress they are making? Is it when they look within themselves and backward to the time when the first gleam of an understanding of Spirit came to them, and recall the banks and drifts of the snow and ice of material beliefs that had to be melted away? Is it when they look back to all this and note their progress, even though it may seem slow, that they feel discouraged? Certainly not. At whatever time a fair-minded review is made of one's progress and blessings, gratitude, hope, and joy must be the feelings uppermost in the thought. Discouragement begins to creep in when the student of Christian Science forgets to look within, and neglects to take inventory of his own mental progress, but, instead, looks without at his neighbor, and attempts to take inventory of that neighbor's seeming blessings and progress, which may appear to him much more rapid than his own.

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"Know thyself"
April 24, 1926
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