Article November 20, 1909 Issue

OCCASIONS FOR GRATITUDE

MILTON B. MARKS

Mortals are so accustomed to insist that all things shall come to them only through the inspection office of physical sense, there receiving its stamp of approval or condemnation and being consigned to a mission of joy or sorrow as the officer of human opinion may dictate, that even gratitude for that which arouses us from a sense of materiality needs to be learned in Christian Science.

Working, as we strive to do, under the rule that "God is Spirit" and that all good is spiritually discerned, it becomes apparent that to submit to the temptation of discouragement is to deviate from this rule. It indicates a failure to perceive that it is material sense only—that which had aspired to advance by something other than spiritual evolution—which is cast down. God's spiritual idea, which never has hope in aught besides God, is not and cannot be discomforted; its anchorage is eternal. If the physical senses say, "I am discouraged," shall one therefore admit, "I have nothing to be grateful for"? Rather than thus stultify our reasoning from the rule laid down, it is essential that we refuse to measure our gratitude according to old standards, refuse to accept the dictum of material belief that there must be something tangible to the material senses before we can be happy. Then Spirit, God, gives us the courage to declare and the ability to know that, by reason of the fact that those hopes and aspirations which were built upon the sand of human desire have fallen, we have reached a new occasion for gratitude and joy, for now we desire to build upon the rock, Christ, Truth, and by the light of eternal Love we see more clearly where the spiritual foundation lies.

Our text-book says (Science and Health, p. 91), "The destruction of error is by no means the destruction of Truth or Life, but is the acknowledgment of them." It is our privilege, then, to take heart, rejoicing always in the ever-presence of Love and Truth, well knowing that the one who hopes only in God can never be disheartened with that prospect, and remembering that man as God's likeness is spiritual in his thinking and in his doing as well.

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