Article January 12, 1935 Issue

Gardening Work

LOUISA MARY COADE

A Student of Christian Science has found her garden, in which she does work, a place where she can learn many valuable lessons in the realm of metaphysics, as well as in nature. Thus, when the necessity to clear a patch of weeds has arisen, she has found helpful the twenty-first verse in the first chapter of James, as translated by Moffatt: "So clear away all the foul rank growth of malice and make a soil of modesty for the Word which roots itself inwardly with power to save your souls." Mrs. Eddy asks in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 343), "Are we clearing the gardens of thought by uprooting the noxious weeds of passion, malice, envy, and strife?" And she continues: "The weeds of mortal mind are not always destroyed by the first uprooting; they reappear, like devastating witch-grass, to choke the coming clover. O stupid gardener! watch their reappearing, and tear them away from their native soil, until no seedling be left to propagate—and rot."

The "witch grass," named "scutch grass" in some localities, is the cultivator's bane. If pulled up carelessly, it breaks off, and the root grows and spreads. Deep digging and patient searching and eradicating, alone can clear the ground of its pernicious presence.

The earnest student of Christian Science will find, quite early in his experience, how necessary it is to overcome bad habits and get rid of sinful and sickly thoughts. Many are even appalled at the extent to which they have been yielding to these in the past. Before coming into the light of divine Science, which reveals the perfection of God and of man, as His reflection, they may have regarded as trivial and even pardonable such faults as bad temper, unkind criticism of others, or a moody disposition—heedless of the distress inflicted on others by their indulgence. Some may have glossed over their unpleasant traits of character as "idiosyncracies," or as due to "temperament." There is no justification for such errors in Christian Science, which calls for the practical demonstration of the truth of perfect being. These errors are mental weeds, and should be dealt with quickly and drastically, and eradicated as unreal.

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