Article May 10, 1930 Issue

Step by Step

ELMA S. WHITMORE

A valuable lesson in perseverance was learned by a young student of Christian Science from a modest workman who, all one winter when employment seemed scarce, worked at a small wage cutting wood for his neighbors. When someone remonstrated with him for doing this kind of work, saying that it was far too hard for a man of his age, he wisely answered, "No, it isn't too hard; I split just one stick at a time."

What a gentle lesson this childlike willingness to take one step at a time brings to us all! How dismayed we are at times in contemplating what we hope to accomplish in even one day, and also in viewing what our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, terms "the entire mass of error" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 118)! Yet she so lovingly and practically encourages and counsels us when she says (ibid., p. 254), "Imperfect mortals grasp the ultimate of spiritual perfection slowly; but to begin aright and to continue the strife of demonstrating the great problem of being, is doing much." Certainly this is requiring of us only what is within our ability to attain—"to begin aright and to continue the strife." It is a cheering thought to realize that through our daily study in Christian Science we have all gleaned the understanding of at least a few simple, yet powerful, statements of Truth, with which to correct one at a time the discouraging suggestions of inferiority, age, lack, inactivity, and imperfection that come to us for acceptance or rejection.

Step by step the patriarch Moses, God's faithful and courageous servant, guided the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage; and Joshua, who as Moses' successor led them in their final perilous passage over Jordan into peaceful and sure dwelling places, commanded that twelve stones for a memorial be taken out of the midst of Jordan, from the place where "the priests' feet stood firm," when they carried forward the ark of the Lord, in order to testify that Israel came over Jordan on dry ground.

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