Article November 23, 1918 Issue

Every Good Gift

ELLA K. RIGGLES

We read in the epistle of James, "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 mortals we are prone to accept our material possessions as the legitimate outcome of our labors, and thereby take them as a matter of course instead of recognizing them as blessings which God's love has provided for us. This fact has been brought out most clearly to the thought of the writer in the following experience.

Just a few weeks after my husband had sailed for France in the service of his country, and when the responsibility of maintaining the home and holding the family together had devolved upon me, I received a notice to vacate within thirty days the house in which we had lived for several years. The blow struck hard, for the congestion in our city had increased until there seemed not an available house or apartment. As a Christian Scientist I knew that only those problems can come to us which we are capable of solving, and that there is a way—the way of divine Science—to meet each one as it presents itself for solution. Our Leader says, "Divine Science, rising above physical theories, excludes matter, resolves things into thoughts, and replaces the objects of material sense with spiritual ideas" (Science and Health, p. 123). My first step, then, must be to resolve "things into thoughts." It was clearly seen that the underlying cause of congestion in this city, the seat of our national Government, is fear. This world-wide upheaval, or chemicalization, has shown mortal mind the unreality of all the things in which it has always believed, and so it has no resting place or home.

Christian Science teaches that one's home is his consciousness of Mind, good, and my next step was to look into my own thought to see what kind of house I was living in. If I were believing in the reality of fear, commercial dominance, greed, intolerance, or limitation of any kind, then I was dwelling in a mortal mind house and was subject to chance and change, subject to eviction. If on the other hand I were dwelling "in the secret place of the most High," endeavoring to have that Mind in me "which was also in Christ Jesus," then I was abiding "under the shadow of the Almighty," and no mortal law of any name or nature could disturb my home.

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