Article May 5, 1917 Issue

The Withered Branch

BRENDA E. HOLTHAM

To the student of Christian Science it is a fact that oftentimes some of the greatest of the metaphysical truths which he learns are brought home to him through the small, apparently trivial happenings of his every-day life. This brings to him not only a quiet gladness quite unknown to the unseeing eye and the unhearing ear, but is a demonstration in itself of Truth's activity, as it shows him that in his experience material sense is assuredly giving way to that spiritual sense which Mrs. Eddy has characterized on page 209 of Science and Health as "a conscious, constant capacity to understand God."

In the early spring a branch from a horse chestnut tree was brought into the office in which the writer is employed, and was placed in water upon the window-sill. Day by day the sun shone in and warmed the tender buds, and the soft spring winds blew over them, until gradually each little bud expanded into a tiny pale green ball, which in turn unrolled itself into a cluster of shining dark leaves, the little branch becoming at last a thing of beauty indeed. For a while thereafter, in the stress of business, it was little noticed. Then one day, when all outside was gorgeous foliage, we looked at it again, but a poor little shriveled-up branch met our gaze, its leaves withered and dried. Separated from the tree which gave it life, how short a span was its existence! Some one tossed it carelessly into a waste basket, and then these words of the Master came to mind: "I am the vine, ye are the branches ... If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."

How typical of mortal life was the poor little faded branch! Then and there I realized what a wonderful object lesson had been mine. I saw plainly, as never before, the oneness of God and man, even as of the vine and its branches. I saw the impotence, the frailty, the incompleteness of the mortal sense of life as existent in matter, that is, as separated from divine Mind. I was also conscious of the limitless powers of development resident in the consciousness deep rooted in the understanding of Spirit, established in Christ, Truth, sustained and nurtured by divine, infinite Love. Without the parent vine how lifeless is the branch! Then I rejoiced in the truth that man, the image and likeness, the expression of God, good, can never do aught but abide in Him; and that any belief in a life apart from God does not, and never can, manifest true being, any more than the leaves of the severed branch could approach in any degree the beauty and maturity of those of the tree itself, although they may have simulated the latter for a day.

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