Article February 23, 1924 Issue

Gratitude

MYRTLE BIRNBAUM

There is, perhaps, no quality of thought more healthgiving, uplifting, and helpful than that known as gratitude. That every one will find some cause for gratitude there is little doubt, if he but make an inventory of his blessings. The writer recalls a recent experience. She awakened one morning with an attack of sore throat, cold, and headache; and things in general seemed all wrong. Having learned that all causation is mental, she knew that something had been allowed admittance into her thought which must be cast out and annulled. Soon there came to remembrance that during the previous day she had evinced a complaining attitude about many things; in fact, she had indulged a sense of ingratitude. This error, once recognized, was dealt with in accordance with the rule of practice in Christian Science; and turning away from the false testimony of material sense, she expressed gratitude for the smallest things, which are so often taken for granted, as well as for the greatest of all things,—Life, Truth, and Love, as explained in Christian Science. In a few hours the pain and soreness were gone, and freedom was regained. The sunshine of gratitude had dispelled the mist of erroneous thinking.

Mrs. Eddy, in "Unity of Good" (p. 56), has said of ingratitude and other wrong thoughts, "Such mental conditions as ingratitude, lust, malice, hate, constitute the miasma of earth." Often, when there seems to be a barrier to our progress, the letting in of gratitude will remove obstructions; for has not our Leader said in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (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." In Malachi we read, "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." We have learned that the true storehouse is our consciousness. So if gratitude be brought into our mental home, the fullness of God's goodness is realized, as the Bible promise reads.

How boundless should be our gratitude for Christian Science, for its authorized literature, and for the great movement which exists to spread its truth, firmly established on the understanding of divine Principle! Though there is still much turmoil in the world, surely it must be the chemicalization of which our Leader writes, which in belief occurs when Truth is forcing error to the surface to be destroyed; and surely no one can doubt that there is taking place a general diminution of the belief of evil and a constant increase in the understanding and demonstration of good. It behooves us all to be grateful, and to rejoice in the understanding which Christian Science reveals of God as omnipresent and omnipotent good.

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