Editorial November 24, 1928 Issue

Why Give Thanks?

Albert F. Gilmore

The desire to acknowledge with gracious words the source of any good gift is common to the human heart. The familiar words of James, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," have a significance deeper than is commonly recognized. In acknowledging God as the source of all good, they make it very clear why mankind is so greatly blessed through the giving of thanks to the Supreme Being.

While the gift which assumes some form of materiality fills a human need, yet manifestly it does not come direct from God; for God is infinite Spirit, and Spirit and matter have nothing in common. How, then, do these good gifts, good because they fill a need, come from God, from "the Father of lights"? Since God is good and infinite, good is infinite. Therefore all good is of God, the one good. While God, Spirit, is never cognizant of matter, is never directly cognizant of the human need, yet under divine law, which is ever operative, infinite Love finds expression in terms of that which seems to be the human want. Mrs. Eddy clearly sets this forth on page 530 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." "In divine Science," she declares, "man is sustained by God, the divine Principle of being. The earth, at God's command, brings forth food for man's use." And she buttresses her statement by referring to the memorable words of Jesus, "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on," words which constitute a command to trust God in the full assurance that if our faith be full, nothing doubting, all our material needs will be met. Divine Providence, however, cares for all, for those who fail to recognize the origin of the bounty bestowed, as well as for those who look to God with faith and understanding. God's gifts are for all. Does not the rain fall alike on the just and the unjust? Therefore, there are none who do not partake of His largess.

Divine law is universally operative and all mortals are its beneficiaries, because the very support of their human sense of life is dependent upon it. And it is wholly because of the fact of God's dominion over the universe that the processes of so-called natural law go on. God's command in response to which the earth produces the food which sustains the material sense of life is the perfect law of Love; and the fact that mortals interpret the universe and its governing law as material accounts for the fact that the product of the operation of that law seems to be material. How truly, then, is God the source and origin of all good!

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