Editorial November 22, 1919 Issue

Thanksgiving

Ella W. Hoag

It is quite appropriate that the Thanksgiving season should be associated in human thought with the harvest time. With fruition there naturally comes a sense of thankfulness and rejoicing. No heart is so dull that it does not feel grateful when some victory has been won, some honest effort has achieved success, some patient endeavor has reached fulfillment. What is true of the individual becomes equally true of the multitude, and many a time happy songs of praise have ascended when triumphs have been recorded.

Paul, however, talks to us of thanksgiving under quite different circumstances. He says, "We glory in tribulation," and then he goes on to explain why; for, he says, "tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts." Now all this is exactly contrary to the human method of procedure, which starts out by saying: If I have the love of God in my heart I can have hope; if I can but hope I will be able to gain experience; with experience I can learn how to be patient; with patience, it would perhaps be possible to stand tribulation; and with such spiritual attainment I might be able to rejoice.

It is Christian Science and the individual demonstration of it which alone make it possible to lay hold of this demand and reap the glorious reward which results from obedience thereto. It is the revelation of Christian Science which unfolds the foundation of thanksgiving as based in so wonderful an understanding of Truth and its salutary action on the human consciousness that human belief is immediately reversed; and why? Because at the very outset Christian Science gives a vision of the reality of God, good, so that the falsity of a suppositional opposite is discerned in at least some slight degree. Then the necessary conclusion follows that the uncovering of evil by Truth must precede evil's rejection and destruction. To mortals this uncovering of evil may often seem like deepest tribulation, but to the student of Christian Science it is a proof of God's allpervading care, since only thus can one ever hope to get rid of evil.

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Thanksgiving

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