Take up the Cross

GERTRUDE M. BRADLEY.

I HAVE been having a bad time lately. For some weeks everything seems to have been going all wrong, and only a few months ago I was so happy and getting on so well through Christian Science. I have been studying it just a year and my understanding of it and its blessings has all been proved from my own small experience, not from what I had heard or read, so it was weak and foolish of me to give way because people have tried to "talk me out of it." But I did. I began to drift and get slack about Bible study and reading Science and Health, to be careless over my thoughts, and I said to myself,"Perhaps I am wrong after all, and this fancied good is only imagination."

From that moment all my old enemies came crowding back. Worries, poverty, lack of ideas for my work, bad health, fear, bad thoughts, unkind speeches, all, till I was in despair and almost overwhelmed. Thanks to what little I knew of Christian Science I realized all through, though vaguely, that it was all my own fault, and at last in desperation I made up my mind to fight the matter out. I was tempted to write to a friend and ask for treatment, but I felt somehow that this would be merely shirking the fight; for I knew she would tell me to watch and pray; she had already told me of two things that were keeping me back and I had got slack in fighting them. So to-night I made up my mind to seek and find. I sat down with my Bible and Science and Health and a number of copies of the Sentinel, and prayed for light.

I skimmed through several articles until I came to one in the issue for January 15, that I read. It was what I needed and I should like to thank the writer for the message in "The Riches of Faith's True Inference."

As I read it I knew I was only another prodigal, and I began to realize that I had been dishonest in not letting God make the best of me, defrauding my loving Father. So I came back there and then, in heartfelt repentance, to ask for pardon and light to start anew.

I found myself reading Mark, 10. With that other inquirer I asked, "What shall I do to inherit?" and with him was sad at the saying, "Take up the cross." Not because I was unwilling but because it did not seem definite enough.

What is taking up the cross?" I asked myself, with a sad foreboding that it would be something intensely painful. "It is so vague." "No," came the thought, "the vagueness is mine, it is but laziness; to-night I will seek till I find."

"What is the cross—oh God, show me!" "If only I could be nearer some one who would tell me things." If only, ah! that is a weak spot. "If only" spells discontent. It means, if I dig to its root, that if I could I would change surroundings that fret me and seem to hinder my growth in Truth. "The cross"—our Saviour's hands were fastened when he was on the cross, yea his feet were fastened. It was not a free or comfortable position, it was constrained and painful, but it did not make him pause for a moment in doing his work. That was one thought, uncongenial surroundings; "Take up" that means "not only resignation, but willingness."

"And follow me." Demonstrate the Truth of Being as you learn it without fear or pause.

Here are my thoughts just as they came to me. They were the guidance needed and perhaps they may be of use to some one else who is wondering vaguely "What is the cross?"

From this failure I have learned another lesson also,— the foolishness of being vague instead of settling down as I did to-night, to think and study definitely, and wait there till shown where and how I had been wrong. If I had done this at once I should have spared myself weeks of intense suffering of body and mind, and bitter regret, and I should not have given any one cause for the jeer, "I told you it (Christian Science) would all evaporate in a week or so, and you'd be just as bad as ever." However, this is a fresh start.

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