Results

According to the dictionary, fruitage connotes a yield of fruit. It can also mean "the product or result of any action, effect, good, or ill". Thus, fruitage is "the outcome or result of an endeavour or undertaking" (Webster).

Chapter eighteen of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy is titled Fruitage. Clearly, her textbook was written with results in mind. In fact, without results, a textbook would be of no use at all.

Eddy begins the chapter with quotations from Jesus, Paul and Solomon. Today, we will look at the first quote.

Jesus

"Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." (Matthew 7: 20) 

One fruit tree mentioned in the Bible is the fig tree. Figs are tender, tasty, and look beautiful! I'm sure they could stand, metaphorically, for beauty, bounty, nourishment, hospitality, abundance etc. A fig tree without fruit or with bad fruit would be a waste of a tree--metaphorically standing for waste, disappointment, failure, a personal sense of responsibility. (I Corinthians 3: 6 "I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.")

I've always enjoyed the parable of the fig tree in Luke 13. Instead of giving up on the apparently fruitless tree, the farmer promises to put in extra effort to "dig about it, and dung it" (Luke 13: 8), indicating a willingness to persist, to dig deeper, to love the work of nurturing the promise.

Mrs. Eddy was realistic in her expectation of results: 

"I have never supposed the world would immediately witness the full fruitage of Christian Science, or that sin, disease, and death would not be believed for an indefinite time; but this I do aver, that, as a result of teaching Christian Science, ethics and temperance have received an impulse, health has been restored, and longevity increased" (348: 26-32, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures).

That sounds like pretty good fruit to me.

Julie Swannell

Church work

The early band of Christian church workers had it tough. But they were faithful, brave, persevering. 

An article by Mary Metzner Trammell and William G. Dawley titled "Primitive Christianity takes root in the Roman world", published in the March 1993 issue of The Christian Science Journal points out the results of their work. While the excerpt here mentions Peter and Paul, we learn from the Bible that there were many others who were faithful, including Titus, our subject this month. Here is the excerpt:

By around AD65, both Peter and Paul had laid down their lives for Christianity. By the end of the century, most of the apostles were gone. But what they left behind was a well-established Church--one that had spread with amazing speed to the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire, one that persecution couldn't destroy.

At the time Jesus ascended, his followers were barely known. But the apostles--and especially Paul--changed that perception forever. They made sure, with every sermon preached and with every letter written, that people understood one thing: They spoke in "the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth." They let everyone know that the good news they preached was distinctive. True, it fulfilled the promises of the Hebrew Bible. Jesus was the Messiah the Jews had expected. But the apostles left no doubt that Jesus made a new covenant. And so his followers needed to found a Church to preserve, propagate, and record for all time the revolutionary truths that he had taught.

It was the Apostle Paul who, above all others, took on the awesome responsibility of establishing that Church. Without his passionate commitment and dogged zeal, Christianity might never have spread much beyond Palestine. Without his tender and sometimes tough stewardship, the churches he founded all over the Roman Empire might have become infected with heresy or faded out altogether. Without the Apostle Paul, primitive Christianity might never have taken root in the Roman world.

Just as Paul instructed Titus to beware of those who "profess that they know God; but in works they deny him" (Titus 1:16), so Mary Baker Eddy insisted that "...however little be taught or learned, that little shall be right" and that "Unless this method be pursued, the Science of Christian healing will again be lost, and human suffering will increase" (Retrospection and Introspection pp. 61-62).

And so can we “be ready to every good work” (Titus 3: 1), “to speak evil of no man” (3:2), in short to gratefully acknowledge and exemplify “the kindness and love of  God our Saviour toward [all mankind]” (3:4).

Julie Swannell

the task: healing

Something I had wondered about has been clarified. People from Crete are indeed called Cretans. And in Titus’ time they were so named as a derogatory term. This is implied in the book by the healing qualities which Titus is required by Paul to encourage in the populace, namely

·       Blameless

·       Selfless

·       Slow to anger

·       Not a drunkard

·       Not quick to violence

·       Not a gambler (implied by “filthy lucre”)

·       Living the Word

·       Not unruly

·       Not vain talkers

·       Not dreamers

Those are from Chapter 1. Chapter 2 gives more.

Titus 1:12 gives a definition by one of themselves. It reads: “It was one of them, their very own prophet, who said, ‘Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.’” New Revised Standard Edition. (The KJV has the spelling “Cretians.”)

Present usage by Merriam-Webster is, “a stupid, vulgar, or insensitive person: CLOD, LOUT.”

What a task Paul set for Titus! I am reminded that Mary Baker Eddy appointed some of her students to go to certain towns and spread the word of Christian Science by healing.

One can only wonder how Titus carried out his task.

What really was required of Titus was to heal. One doesn’t imagine that he healed the whole populace, but what joy over those who were healed.

Joyce Voysey