Article May 3, 1930 Issue

Mental Gardens

HAROLD L. RANSOM

Doubtless it has been the privilege of each one at some time to come in contact with another who has patiently, tenderly, and persistently tended the garden of his thoughts. How the manifest graces refreshed and cheered us, impelling us to turn more assiduously than ever to the cultivation of our own mental garden! To use Henry Drummond's words in "The Greatest Thing in the World," in referring to the sweet grace of guilelessness, a grace which surely should be tenderly nurtured in one's mental garden: "What a stimulus and benediction even to meet with it for a day!"

Let us remember, first of all, that we cannot run away from our own consciousness; that we cannot avoid living in our own mental garden. If the thoughts sown there develop briers or thistles, either we must live with them or we must vigorously set about uprooting them. Abraham Lincoln once said that throughout his life wherever he found a weed growing he had endeavored to uproot it and in its place to plant a flower.

It is emphatically the purpose of Christian Science to replace the weeds of careless and erroneous thinking with the flowers of Truth and Love. And Christian Science makes it clear that no one is compelled to live in an unlovely mental garden. However long neglected, however overgrown with weeds, no mental garden is past redeeming. This is the irresistibly appealing message of the Christ, Truth. The work of renewal may be arduous. It may require unremitting, patient, persevering effort. Mary Baker Eddy writes (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 340), "There is no excellence without labor; and the time to work, is now." The end to be achieved is spiritual harmony, and if we persist the result is assured.

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