Article July 29, 1916 Issue

Gratitude Freely Expressed

J. LOUISE CARTER

There are some who know that they have a demonstrable understanding of Truth, that they can clothe it in appropriate language, and can then write or voice it in such a manner that every reader or hearer may be thereby benefited. To those who are thus constituted, it will be admitted by all that to relate an experience in Christian Science does not seem a task, but rather a joy and a privilege. Daily and hourly do we participate in the beneficial effects of Christian Science, and we tell of it gratefully in the privacy of our homes. Is there, then, some occult power, singularly active on Wednesday evening between the hours of eight and nine o'clock, which ties our tongues and glues us to our seats? Every Christian Scientist knows that there is no such mystical power to work evil with him and paralyze the willing effort to share with others "what God has given him of experience, hope, faith, and understanding" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 149). He also knows that God, good, governs all, and that "right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action" (Science and Health, p. 454).

The rich feast at our Thanksgiving day service is an object—lesson to us all. For the preceding days there is provided a Bible lesson dealing with gratitude, and this persistent turning of thought toward spiritual quality opens up a natural fountain of gratitude; fear is lost in self—for—getfulness, in the desire to be of use to our fellow men, and testimonies spring forth on every side. Was there ever a Thanksgiving service long enough to include them all?

Back of a Wednesday testimony meeting at which the selected reading requires but a few minutes for its performance, or back of a Lesson—Sermon which has been studied by Scientists all over the world and which requires but a half hour, or less, for its delivery, are undoubtedly years of earnest thought and experience. Likewise, preceding the Christian Science testimony, which in itself may seem of small moment to the listener, there may have been the overcoming of bitter prejudice against what one thought Christian Science to be, and perhaps prejudice toward Mrs. Eddy, its Discoverer and Founder; the overcoming of states and stages of sin, suffering, poverty, grief, or many another illusion, seemingly very real to the deceived sense of the speaker; and last, though not least, years of overcoming of that most common enemy, fear, which is cast out by love, and which "hath torment" just so long as it seems to exist.

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