Article February 5, 1944 Issue

"The perfume of gratitude"

MARY SANDS LEE

A grateful man is a happy man; he is alert to good. Real gratitude carries with it a pervasive good will. The essence of it is love. The significance and value of gratitude as a human quality are often underestimated. Gratitude is not a momentary or passive feeling, and it takes more than words to express it. Gratitude has evidence in action.

If we are really grateful for a new glimpse of fundamental truth, we do not lose it or forget it. We immediately avail ourselves of it, incorporate it into our daily thinking and living, and into our approach to any subject or problem that presents itself. We value and welcome and entertain it as a continuing member of our mental household. Gratitude that is substantive includes a disposition to use progressively and love increasingly that for which it is expressed. In the soil of gratitude are sown seeds of worthy achievement.

The life of our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, is an outstanding example of such gratitude. When the revelation of Christian Science came to her there was no repining over the years of suffering and frustration she might have been spared, had she perceived this truth earlier; instead, substantive and heroic gratitude for these experiences and their fruitfulness shines forth in her statement (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 107), "God had been graciously preparing me during many years for the reception of this final revelation of the absolute divine Principle of scientific mental healing." Antecedent to gratitude is the recognition of good, and in its ultimate, gratitude is understanding of the supremacy of good.

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