Article January 6, 1917 Issue

"Every good gift"

BERTHA BARKER

In the epistle of James we read: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." As students of divine Science how alert we should be to heed this clear statement of truth, and promptly refer every good quality of thought, every desirable attribute, back to God, who is the source thereof.

If the belief in heredity would bind us with an appetite for drink or with an uncontrollable temper, we should earnestly go to work to know that, since God is the only creator, man as His likeness never had any material ancestry from which to inherit evil propensities; that God being the only Mind, there never was a mortal mind to transmit or reproduce its unholy attributes. But do we not sometimes allow personal sense to view with pride and complacency this same lie about creation, when it softly whispers to us that a good memory or a happy disposition is ours because it was "a family trait"? Not long ago the writer had occasion to learn that it is a mistake to claim too much even for the good qualities which we believe we may have derived from human ancestors. An apparently innocent statement of this sort is nevertheless an admission of the whole of evil's claim, namely, that there is intelligence and existence apart from God.

Should we not be as insistent in our rejection of this false sense of creator and creation in the one case as in the other, and unceasingly acknowledge God alone as the source of "every good gift"? In this way we shall recognize and consistently prove in our practice the truth expressed in Mrs. Eddy's wonderful "scientific statement of being" (Science and Health, p. 468): "All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all."

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