PERPETUAL THANKSGIVING

"Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands .... Come before his presence with singing .... Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name" (Ps. 100:1, 2,4).

From ancient times the importance of acknowledging God as the source of all good has been recognized: the Israelites had their thank offerings, the Psalmist refers to the sacrifice of thanksgiving. The Master repeatedly gave thanks, and Paul said (Col. 3:15), "Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful."

Students: Get
JSH-Online for
$5/mo
  • Every recent & archive issue

  • Podcasts & article audio

  • Mary Baker Eddy bios & audio

Subscribe

Now, thanksgiving is more than lip service. An assertion of gratitude while the heart is filled with hatred, resentment, dissatisfaction, doubt, or fear is far from real thanksgiving. Gratitude ever reaches beyond the vacillations of material sense testimony and abides in perpetual acknowledgment of the spiritual fact. In Science the acknowledgment of good is the demonstration of good. What healing and transformation we should witness if the whole world were to send up a paean of praise to the Giver of all good, and were to abide in the acknowledgment that nothing but what expresses God, good, is real, or ever has been real! How the scars of war, the smart of hate, and the devastation of lack would disappear! With what tenderness and beauty the wilderness of human experience would burst into bloom, and with what spiritual fragrance earth's mental atmosphere would be cleansed!

One may say: Well, that is too chimerical and idealistic! Think of the hatreds that motivate mankind; the tragedies that lie concealed below the surface; the pestilence and famine, the terror and uncertainty, that haunt humanity! Science says: Know instead the infinite presence and power of irresistible divine Love, the Love that is God, the Love that is Life, the Love that is ever operative and that cannot be hidden or remain unfelt. Love is power, and there never has been any other power.

When the Master declared (John 4-:23), "The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth," he uttered a scientific and revolutionary demand. Correlative to this, Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 140), "We worship spiritually, only as we cease to worship materially." And she adds, "Worshipping through the medium of matter is paganism."

True worship is based upon the scientific starting point that Spirit, namely, God and His idea, is All, and that there is no other power, mind, or being but the power, Mind, and Being which is God. All scientific reasoning and every true conclusion is deduced from this premise. There never has been a moment when aught but God was real, never a moment when there existed a creation which could lapse into evil, or a man who could die. God, Spirit, who is infinite Life, Truth, Love, is the only creator, and there is but one creation, spiritual, whole, perfect, free. The man of God's creating is wholly spiritual, the forever expression of Life, without beginning and without end. Man lives because God is his Life; he loves because he reflects divine Love; he is because God is his Soul, origin, and substance. He cannot fall from perfection or be separated from good. He has no consciousness but that which is good, no Mind but God, no life but divine Life. His purity is unassailable, his harmony is uninvadable, his individuality is one with divine Principle, his identity is the reflection of Soul. These are the spiritual facts with which the Christian Scientist dwells.

Christian Science reverses the testimony of the senses and exposes its falsity. It undermines mortality; it dethrones matter by proving it to be a myth, having neither substance, intelligence, nor life. Scientific proof or demonstration alone attests real gratitude. Says Science and Health (p. 280): "Finite belief can never do justice to Truth in any direction. Finite belief limits all things, and would compress Mind, which is infinite, beneath a skull bone. Such belief can neither apprehend nor worship the infinite; and to accommodate its finite sense of the divisibility of Soul and substance, it seeks to divide the one Spirit into persons and souls." To think of oneself or another as a finite material person giving thanks to God for blessings received, is not worshiping the Father "in spirit and in truth," but is "worshipping through the medium of matter," and is therefore not Christianity, but paganism!

Man is established in Mind, subject alone to the law of Mind. He is not a finite recipient of divine favor, but exists as the very expression and evidence of the affluence of Love, the continuity of Life, and the integrity of Truth. His harmony and well-being are as invariable as the Principle which governs him.

Let us then truly "enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise," not as finite mortals giving thanks to a Deity from whom we are seeking favor, not through material fasting or feasting, but through scientific acknowledgment and demonstration of the oneness of Principle and its idea. In "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy says (p. 106): "It has long been a question of earnest import. How shall mankind worship the most adorable, but most unadored,—and where shall begin that praise that shall never end? Beneath, above, beyond, methinks I hear the soft, sweet sigh of angels answering, 'So live, that your lives attest your sincerity and resound His praise.'"

Real thanksgiving pierces the veil of materialism. It refutes material sense with spiritual sense, personal sense with the truth of spiritual identity, and corporeal sense with the incorporeal nature of being. Gratitude is spiritual. It discerns, acknowledges, and demonstrates the Life that is God. Thus may our Thanksgiving season be perpetual as with Paul we reiterate, "Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful."

L. Ivimy Gwalter

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE
Article
Notices
November 22, 1947
Contents

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit