Editorial September 15, 1934 Issue

Benefit

VIOLET KER SEYMER

THE Psalmist's question, "What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?" is heart-searching. To God, omnipotent, unrivaled good, our unreserved obedience, invariable gratitude, and serene fidelity are due. A realization of God's outpoured gifts and their appropriation are not only a benefit to mankind; they are indispensable to salvation. Doubt, discouragement, blunted hopes, divided reliance, ingratitude, fear, self-pity, render nothing to God, good.

The way of harmony lies in specific remembrance of the outpoured gifts of health, life, intelligence, wisdom, all of which are spiritually apprehensible now, for God's image is consciously receptive only to good. And since, as Christian Scientists, we acknowledge the outpouring by divine Mind of all that is needful to man, in other words, we acknowledge God to be man's creator and benefactor, so must we needs acknowledge that man is God's image and beneficiary. Man's spiritual capacity to be always conscious of harmony has never been taken from him. Through Christian Science, we can be liberated from the mesmerism which would cause us to brood over discordant conditions. If yielded to, this temptation would make us unmindful of the benefits which are incessantly and impartially emanating from infinite Mind. No one should adopt this impersonal lie against his true identity, for we have learned to claim "the Spirit of adoption," that is, the adoption of Spirit.

Hence, the Psalmist's call to spiritual sense, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits." Should we waste one precious moment in dwelling on discord instead of denying it, we should at that moment be forgetting our spiritual blessedness. But the true thinker, holding closely to the teachings of Christian Science, refuses to pigeonhole false impressions. Instead, he cultivates true remembrance, which consists in actively dwelling on the one perfect cause and effect. Fears, personal slights, lack or loss, should not be carried forward as a debit balance into the present, for there is no slackening either in the impartations of Mind's gifts or in their reception. Nothing prevents their outpouring, and nothing intercepts their passage to man, whose credit is always good.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

Putting on Immortality