Article March 14, 1970 Issue

"T-i-m-b-e-r!"

JAMES K. KYSER

If you're in the forest when a cut tree starts to fall, you'll hear the warning cry, "T-i-m-b-e-r!"—even in this day of chain saws and hydraulic shears. But for the lumberjack who used an ax, the cry was far more than a warning. It was his exclamation of triumph, announcing that perseverance and skill had prevailed again.

"T-i-m-b-e-r!" is significant to Christian Scientists, too. Why? They're lumberjacks in the forests of human thinking, summoned by these words of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science and their pioneer Leader, in the textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "A book introduces new thoughts, but it cannot make them speedily understood. It is the task of the sturdy pioneer to hew the tall oak and to cut the rough granite. Future ages must declare what the pioneer has accomplished." ^{Science and Health, Pref., p. vii;}

Pioneers persevere, persist, press on. A woodsman of old attacked a great tree all alone, persistently wielding his double-bit (two edged) ax until he triumphed. And a Christian Scientist attacks the tallest oak of false belief, persistently wielding his two-edged sword of Truth until he triumphs. The tougher the timber, the greater was the woodsman's tenacity. He never abandoned a partly cut tree —nor does a Christian Scientist abandon a falsity half conquered. He perseveres until he fells it.

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