Editorial May 14, 1927 Issue

Gathering and Sowing

Albert F. Gilmore

In the opening lines of the most familiar of all of Mrs. Eddy's precious hymns she asks the holy Shepherd for divine guidance, "How to gather, how to sow, how to feed Thy sheep" (Poems, p. 14). Our Leader well knew that gathering precedes sowing: that the harvest must be garnered if one is to possess the golden grain which is to be sowed again to insure another and larger gathering-in. In the very order of the words is an important lesson. How often do mortals undertake to sow before they are sufficiently supplied with true seed, and in consequence neither the sowing nor the reaping is blessed!

What is the gathering that must precede righteous sowing? The answer to this is also found in the words of our Leader, who draws a sharp distinction between the good seed and the bad. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 535) she writes, "The seed of Truth and the seed of error, of belief and of understanding,—yea, the seed of Spirit and the seed of matter,—are the wheat and tares which time will separate, the one to be burned, the other to be garnered into heavenly places." There can be no doubt as to the significance of these words. The seed of Truth, of Spirit, can be naught else than the spiritual idea, the Christ, the truth about God, man, and creation. Then the ingathering in which we are bound to engage is the laying hold of spiritual Truth, divine ideas, the seed which, sown in good soil, will bring forth much fruit, some even an hundredfold.

The fact established as to the kind of seed which may be profitably gathered, there follows the necessity of learning how it may be garnered, how the sower may be prepared for his gracious labor of spreading abroad the seeds of Truth. Again we find full directions in the teachings of Christian Science. On page 261 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy makes it unmistakably clear how this may be done. "Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true," she admonishes, "and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts." Then the enduring, good, and true are the seeds which bear much fruit when properly sown and tended. The quantity of the good seed gathered will be exactly in proportion to one's fidelity in holding to the injunction. Thinking good, holding constantly to the pattern seen in the mount as the model of our thought, thus we shall fill the storehouse with the abundance of spiritual riches. "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse," commanded the Lord through the inspired word of the prophet, and great blessings are promised to him who obeys the divine mandate.

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