Article September 24, 1904 Issue

Gratitude

MARTHA KEEP SINCLAIR.

In the Wednesday evening meetings we often hear the expression of a deep sense of gratitude for what Christian Science has done for the speaker. It is natural for all to feel thankful when they have come out of a sense of bondage into a glorious realization of freedom. There is, however, a still deeper feeling, and it is that which every practitioner realizes when a patient is lifted out of sin and disease into a life of purity and health.

Men and women often come to Christian Science for help when all material remedies have failed. It is inspiring to see the step daily growing stronger, the eyes growing brighter, to see their efforts to understand, when you point out to them the lessons they must learn, and then some day to see them bound into your presence and tell you that they feel they now realize the meaning of the spiritual birth and that are not mystified as was Nicodemus when Jesus told him he must be born again to enter into the kingdom of heaven. What joy it also brings to see their early demonstrations growing larger as time goes on, and finally, when they bid you good-bye and start out on their career, depending upon God, divine Principle, as revealed to them in the Bible and Science and Health, for their daily manna, — to see all this brings to the heart a feeling of gratitude which words cannot express and God alone can know, — a paean of thanksgiving for the privilege of having demonstrated for some one the deep truths of this beautiful Science, — this must be experienced to be understood.

No matter for how short a period one may be treated, when that patient leaves the practitioner he should know something of the Science which has healed him. If a patient become discouraged because he is not quickly healed, and ceases to be treated, even then he can take with him such seeds of truth that inspite of error those seeds will spring up and bear fruit. Christian Scientists are and should be the most grateful people in the world, for they are daily proving that, as God's children, they do not need medicine; that they do not need great wealth for great happiness; that they do not need worldly pleasures; that they are listening for the still, small voice, and that what they hear keeps them happily employed about their Father's business.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

The Harmony of Life