Editorial February 13, 1937 Issue

"This gift is already yours"

Violet Ker Seymer

Referring to a passage of Scripture, Mrs. Eddy said to a gathering of Christian Scientists assembled under her balcony at Pleasant View, "I would present a gift to you to-day, only that this gift is already yours" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 170). Accompanying these words, a visitor records, was the gesture of outstretched hands, typical of the outpoured blessings of infinite Love.

The prayer of petition implies that a blessing is being withheld, or else that one believes himself unable to receive and respond to it. The correct sense of God and man removes both these restrictions from human thought. Through Christian Science the prayer of petition—a steppingstone to higher prayer—soon expands into the prayer of thanksgiving. When one desires that which God, good, is eternally bestowing, then it is a scientific fact that "this gift is already yours." Therefore spiritual receptivity, constantly denied by the blindness of material sense, needs to be constantly affirmed by the student of Christian Science. When this mental attitude is honestly maintained, whatever would claim to obstruct spiritual receptivity will be disclosed and dispersed by the action of Truth.

True prayer, our Leader says (No and Yes, p. 39), "shows us more clearly than we saw before, what we already have and are; and most of all, it shows us what God is." Of spiritual understanding—true prayer—it can be said, "This gift is already yours, for Spirit reveals it.

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