Editorial December 9, 1922 Issue

Our Gardens

Ella W. Hoag

Writers, ever since the time when the book of Genesis was penned, have used gardens in simile and metaphor, and have loved to draw many lessons therefrom. The preparation of the soil, the sowing of the seed, the tending of the early and the later growth, and finally the gathering of the products, have all been written of, until one might almost think the subject had been considered from every possible standpoint. While all this may make the subject appear more or less trite, there are some things from which valuable lessons can never cease to be drawn, and surely the idea of a garden is one of these.

If we think of each one's consciousness as a mental garden, what an amazing variety of vision begins to unfold! In what different states of development the gardens appear, and how manifold their apparent purposes! Some seem made to present only a pleasing impression, with all the best looking plants in the front rows. Others, one must search through long and earnestly to discover the rare beauties hidden away from view. Then there are those which appear to grow only useful things, and yet others which combine the useful and the picturesque. There are prim gardens, where everything seems orderly in the extreme, and careless ones all overgrown with weeds.

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All this is a more or less just estimate of what the ordinary mental gardens of humanity present to the beholder. But there is a more serious viewpoint from which they should be considered. When we stop to realize that in them is planted all that makes for success or failure, for happiness or distress, for health or sickness, for good or evil, it may be readily seen that the greatest attention must be paid to their preparation and to their cultivation. All want their gardens to be pleasing; all would like them to be profitable and beneficent. Christian Science teaches, however, that the mental garden which is to bring forth the thirtyfold, or the sixtyfold, or the hundredfold of good to which our Master alluded, must be the one whose soil has not only been prepared by God, but it must have sown in it only the seed of Truth, and constant watchfulness must be exercised that nothing of an opposite nature shall be left to develop and blossom into things undesirable.

In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 343) our Leader, in speaking of our mental gardens, writes: "Are we clearing the gardens of thought by uprooting the noxious weeds of passion, malice, envy, and strife? Are we picking away the cold, hard pebbles of selfishness?" And she further adds: "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." Strong words these; but how necessary to regard them, if one's garden is to be kept filled with the things which always exhale sweet odors, and which bloom only to bless,—whose fruit shall feed the spiritually hungry and enrich all who come to them.

When one first thinks of his mental garden from the standpoint of Christian Science, he is apt, deep down in his heart, to hope that his is the "good ground" of which Jesus spoke in his parable of the sower and the seed; but he soon finds that he must be willing to let God prepare the ground, with very vigorous measures if need be. Few, indeed, who do not find that the digging must be deep which is to eradicate all that would retard the growth of the seed of Truth, which is to bring forth fruit "after his kind"!

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 180) Mrs. Eddy says: "In Science one must understand the resuscitating law of Life. This is the seed within itself bearing fruit after its kind, spoken of in Genesis." Herein is the fundamental truth which brings into final perfection every mental garden. Here is the glorious law which not only prepares the soil, but also sows the seed and brings forth the fruit. This "resuscitating law of Life" is the truth which, declared, clung to, and obeyed, will uproot and destroy everything foreign to good, and will cherish and protect all that is true and right.

What the Christian Scientist has to do is to keep this law ever active in his own thinking. In order to do this, he will have no time to spend looking over into his neighbor's garden to see if that neighbor is doing his weeding properly; neither will be spend valuable moments wondering if his own garden is to bring forth the hundredfold which once he fondly hoped it might. On the contrary, the work in his garden will often seem so arduous he will feel he will be quite content if his garden furnishes any real fruitage! Every moment will be spent in the work of using the "resuscitating law of Life" so diligently that all who come to his garden shall find the fragrance of mercy and compassion which blossoms there, so wonderfully sweet, the flowers of peace and joy so exquisite, the fruit of health and holiness so healing, that they will long to have their own gardens governed by the same marvelous law. Such gardens will have the blessed privilete of "being ensamples to the flock."

Ella W. Hoag.

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