Article November 30, 1907 Issue

GIVING-THANKS TIME

ELOISE CAMERON MAC GREGOR.

In this month of November, when all right-minded American people are thinking of their reasons for thankfulness, we, as Christian Scientists, are daily and hourly striving to overcome the inherently greedy and dishonest tendencies of the so-called mortal mind by recalling and cherishing in thought our great indebtedness to Christian Science for the innumerable blessings it brings to us. Perhaps Christian Science has lifted us or our dear ones from beds of pain; or. if it has not done this, can we not be grateful that it is doing it for hundreds of others? It comforts the sorrows which seem so very real, by destroying them: it breaks the lethargy of indolence, and stills tempests of mad ambition: it corrects disorderly habits of thinking, or the seeming absence of any thinking whatsoever, so prevalent among mortals: it give us a higher sense of the meaning of the ten Commandments, and insistently demands that each one in its every meaning shall be kept day and night, through the week as well as on Sunday. For these, and for the many other practical blessings which Christian Science brings us, we are im measurably grateful. We learn in Christian Science that gratitude is not mere thankfulness, but that it means the "giving" of thanks. As our Leader tells us in Science and Health, p. 3. "Gratitude is much more than a verbal expression of thanks Action expresses more gratitude than speech. The "giving" is therefore inseparably connected with the "thanks. " In common parlance this is not merely thank time, but it is preeminently thanksgiving time. Any one who is even beginning to be worthy the name Christian Scientist has learned the importance of thanksgiving, and by his deeds as well as his words is emphasizing the "giving."

How long should we even seem to be alive if we kept on inhaling air, but never exhaled any? Or how rapidly would pupils progress in school if they were always studying, but never proved in any way. by giving out. that they understood what they had been taught? Do we always realize how absolutely reasonable and relentless the demands of truth are. in relation to our Christian Science career? Or how inseparably bound up in our experience is that inexorable law of divine love which is justice as well as mercy?

Sometimes the thought is voiced, "Why do I not get on faster, or get more out of Science and Health?" The answer must always be. "Because you do not give out enough: you get in the exact ratio of what you give: no more and no less." Nothing is more opposed to the true idea of Christian Science than the belittling concept of good as a grab-bag or bargain counter, for it sinks the one who entertains it into the mire of selfishness and injustice. The normal minded recipient of Christian Science healing, or its other benefits, usually declares that he will no longer deplore his cataclysmal experiences if only he may help one person as wretched in mind or body as he himself has been, to obtain this healing truth.

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