Article October 24, 1914 Issue

"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad"

STOKES ANTHONY BENNETT

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE is essentially a religion of rejoicing, Bestowing its blessings of health, happiness, and success upon every earnest and sincere seeker after Truth, it inspires with faith, hope, and confidence as nothing else can. Being the demonstrable Word of God, revealer of divine or spiritual good, Christian Science shows its loyal and wide-awake students their rightful heritage of harmony and dominion, at the same time filling them with joy and gladness unspeakable. Throughout the world today, thousands upon thousands of men and women are sending up praises to God for giving to this age an undaunted and courageous messenger, who through her purity and her devotion to the right was able to discover and to found Christian Science, which is indeed making mortals free.

The rejoicing, happy heart is ever the grateful, loving heart. In fact, there can be no real happiness and joy without a corresponding thanksgiving and holy regard for the source of these grand and noble gifts. Because "happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love" (Science and Health, p. 57), and because, as St. Paul declares, "the kingdom of God is . . . joy," it is plain that the great I AM is the source and support of these splendid qualities, and that to Him belongs all the credit for them; hence, to be imbued with the spirit of genuine happiness and joy, means to experience that satisfaction, contentment, and peace which really do pass human understanding. It means also to manifest unity or at-one-ment with God, thus proving ourselves His obedient and dutiful children.

The Bible has much to say to its students about rejoicing. The twelfth chapter of Deuteronomy declares, "Thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God in all that thou puttest thine hands unto," while the sixty-eighth psalm says, "Let the righteous [the right thinkers and doers] be glad; let them rejoice before God: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice." With almost the first words of Christ Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, there is recorded this injunction: "Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven;" that is, great is the reward of heavenly harmony here and now, for those who strive to think, speak, and act rightly. In his first epistle to the Thessalonians, the apostle Paul admonishes: "Follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men. Rejoice evermore. . . . In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God."

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