Article August 3, 1918 Issue

Gratitude and Unfoldment

VIOLET WEBSTER DUNHAM

Mrs. Eddy says in that wonderful chapter on Prayer (Science and Health, p. 3): "Are we really grateful for the good already received? Then we shall avail ourselves of the blessings we have, and thus be fitted to receive more." Are we really recognizing and availing ourselves of the power of the truth we have already seen and declared, and so becoming enabled to unfold more of good? The writer recalls an experience in which discouragement was overcome by gratitude, and this blessing resulted in perfect and instantaneous healing of a stubborn physical ailment.

The truth had been declared faithfully for many days, without any apparent change, and one morning she sat at the window with the textbook, discouragement seeming to weigh heavily upon her thought. Chancing to glance out of the window, she noticed on the street below some laborers at work breaking up concrete blocks. Faithfully they hammered away without any immediate results, but after many measured blows, the blocks would suddenly break apart. Then came the analogous thought: Those men are working at a problem, and they know the answer; hence they are not discouraged by the seeming slowness of their task. They do not need to know which blow is going to break the concrete; but they do know that each blow counts, and so they continue until the result is attained. It is not the first blow nor the last which does the work, but it is the steady, persistent effort, and each and every blow has been needed to bring about the breaking of the solid stone. Like a flash came the spiritual awakening which enabled her to declare, almost aloud, that every word of truth has power.

Many days had been devoted to solving this problem, seemingly without any change in the condition, yet every declaration of the reality of good and of man's right relation to God had done its work, and every declaration was needed. Then a deep sense of gratitude for the positive Principle revealed to suffering humanity by our beloved Leader, took the place of the discouraged thought, and with righteous desire for further unfoldment, study of the textbook was joyfully taken up. There was no sense of the passage of time, but within a very few moments absolute freedom was manifested, with not a vestige of weakness or convalescence, although it had not seemed possible to take solid food for almost two weeks. For the physical relief there was a great thankfulness, but this was not to be compared with the glorious spiritual uplift which had dispelled the depression of the moment before, nor with the joyous realization that this truth is available to all mankind, and that right now can be entered the holy of holies through the understanding of the kingdom of God.

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