Editorial June 29, 1918 Issue

The Gift of God

Annie M. Knott

There can be no question that the love of life comes to us consciously and unconsciously from our earliest hours; and this is right, for despite the many human misconceptions of life, man's life can only be truly known as the gift of God; indeed Christian Science makes it clear that God is man's Life, and that man lives truly only as he reflects the divine Life. In the first epistle of Peter we read: "He that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: let him eschew evil, and do good."

We cannot overlook the fact that life was the theme upon which the Master dwelt continually; he said that his mission was to bring more abundant life to humanity, and this he did in the healing of all manner of sickness and disease, and even in the overcoming of death itself. In that memorable interview with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well we find that he took occasion to present this great theme when the Samaritan woman refused to give him a drink of water. To this he responded: "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." Although Christ Jesus constantly directed all thought toward life in its spiritual sense, which means eternal life, he was not inconsistent when he declared, "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." To the Christian Scientist this would mean that one must give up the material sense of life in order to gain life spiritually, but this does not mean that one must pass through the experience called death in so doing.

In Christian Science we learn beyond question that Life is not in matter nor dependent upon matter, and it is only as we demonstrate this vital truth that we can find the life which is truly the gift of God, which is God's idea understood and demonstrated. A good deal of the religious teaching of the past was to the effect that we must not love life, but must accept the thought of death as of divine ordination and purpose, and this mistaken belief was responsible for much of the hopeless illness experienced by mankind the world over. It was too often believed that God indeed gave life, but also took it away, in spite of the fact that there is nothing in the Master's teachings to support this supposition, for Jesus said in the most unequivocal terms, "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death."

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