Editorial July 17, 1926 Issue

God's Gifts

Albert F. Gilmore

Mortals commonly give little heed to the source of their manifold blessings; least of all do they attribute them to God. They quite overlook the familiar statement of James, although in unmistakable language he contemplates God as the munificent bestower of the infinite blessings of which mankind is the recipient. "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above," declared the apostle, "and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." No statement could be more definite; none could be plainer. In the final analysis, whether or not mortals take cognizance of this signal fact, God is the source and giver of all good.

Among the so-called necessaries of life, food is regarded as an essential. Is God the source of our food supply? one may ask. Mrs. Eddy was definite in her statement. "The earth, at God's command," she writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 530), "brings forth food for man's use." Since God is infinite Life, there can be no manifestation without Him, no existence without God; and while God knows not material food in the sense of being conscious of materiality, it is assured that since God is infinite Life, our present sense of right supply must result from the actuality of this infinitude of good. Because of this great fact, Christ Jesus could say, "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink," since trust in God, trust born of understanding, brings mortals whatever they have agreed upon as necessary to their well-being. How contemplation of God as the infinite Giver turns our thought to Him in gratitude and thanksgiving! All good that has entered our lives, supplied our needs, enriching and enlarging our experience, has had its source in the infinite Father-Mother God, in whom Paul declares "we live, and move, and have our being."

Furthermore, we learn in Christian Science that the material blessing is but the shadow of the things to come, since the counterfeit by reversal points to the reality. How wonderful must be the reality, the beauty and glory of God's bestowal upon His beloved! Paul was so sure that the necessaries of life, so called, were but symbols of the spiritual realities that he described them as "a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ." Manifestly, he saw reality as spiritual, of which the material is but the counterfeit.

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