Gratitude is a priceless treasure to be valued and guarded as a most cherished possession. The grateful heart is open to receive the infinite and constant flow of good proceeding from God. It opens the way for the activity of Christ in human consciousness.

When one's consciousness is filled with gratitude, belief in evil is nullified, for gratitude acts as a shield against aggressive mental suggestion. Gratitude for God's allness and man's oneness with God goes hand in hand with other graces of Spirit, such as humility, fearlessness, and joy. Purity of thought is allied to humility and is a definite protection against animal magnetism. This was wonderfully exemplified when David slew the Philistine, Goliath of Gath. Then it was demonstrated that trust in God and moral courage were sufficient to destroy error's pretensions to power and presence. This courage and confidence in God's goodness strengthened David for the many tasks which lay ahead of him.

By daily giving thanks to God Daniel was prepared when his testing time came in the lions' den. Three times a day he had prayed to God for protection. Thus he realized in a measure man's oneness with Mind and proved Love's control over untoward conditions. He looked beyond the carnal mind's objectified bestial ferocity, claiming to express itself through the lions, and thereby proved the inability of evil to deprive him of his God-given harmony and peace.

Mary Baker Eddy writes in her textbook. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 224), "Truth brings the elements of liberty." And farther on she says: "The power of God brings deliverance to the captive. No power can withstand divine Love."

When facing the lions of limitation expressed in sickness, poverty, discord, and doubt, we should have confidence in the power of good and turn from material sense testimony to find deliverance through the realization of the true facts of being. Sickness is never a condition of man; it is always the suggestion of the absence of health. The manifestation of poverty stems from a false or limited sense of true substance, a suggestion that God, the All-in-all, is not infinite and ever present and is incapable of supplying all good to man. Lack is a belief that substance is matter instead of Spirit, God, the only true substance, which is ever available to meet every human need. Hagar's experience in the wilderness of Beersheba, as recorded in Genesis (21:14-20), shows that it was her fear and doubt of God's ever-presence and goodness that at first prevented her from seeing the well of water.

When tempted by the devil in the wilderness, Christ Jesus said (Matt. 4:4), "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Jesus proved his sonship with God by expressing absolute obedience to God's law of perfection. By walking on the water he annulled the so-called law of gravitation. By appearing in a room after the doors were closed he proved his material body to be but a mental concept, a belief of mortal mind which is subject to the higher law of infinite Mind, wherein matter is substanceless and unknown. Speaking of material concepts, our Leader says on page 86 of her textbook: "Mortal mind sees what it believes as certainly as it believes what it sees. It feels, hears, and sees its own thoughts."

The student of Christian Science is daily learning and with gratitude accepting the spiritual fact that in God's kingdom there is no lack of any good thing. God, good, is constantly and abundantly supplying His ideas with His own qualities. In proportion as we become conscious of ever-present, impartial Love, paeans of praise and thanksgiving rise to our Father-Mother God. Our spiritual heritage is the illimitable good of Spirit, God. His law of spiritual progress opens the door to heavenly riches. In a letter to a branch church Mrs. Eddy says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 154): "God only waits for man's worthiness to enhance the means and measure of His grace. You have already proof of the prosperity of His Zion. You sit beneath your own vine and fig-tree as the growth of spirituality—even that vine whereof our Father is husbandman."

The fullness and ever-presence of God's love always ready to meet every human need were perfectly clear to Christ Jesus. Because of his spiritual knowledge of the omnipresence and omniscience of Life, the suggestion that Lazarus had died did not disturb him. Instead, he remained firm in the truth that Life is eternal and never subject to the belief of death. Through the prayer of spiritual understanding he proved the grave powerless to separate man from his divine source, and in grateful acknowledgment of man's complete freedom from entangling beliefs he voiced the demand (John 11:44). "Loose him, and let him go."

To God, the Giver of all good, we offer gratitude in words and in deeds, assured of His constant loving care. We are grateful that Christian Science enables us to recognize and prove that man, as God's idea, is richly endowed with health, intelligence, dominion, with all good qualities. In childlike faith, humility, and gratitude we may follow the path which leads to the light of spiritual understanding, the discernment of spiritual good, which regenerates the human sense of self until we awake from the Adam-dream to the realization of God's allness and man's oneness with Him. A full salvation from all evil, disease, and death is assured to those who understand and express Mind's government of man.

The second verse of a hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal (No.374) beautifully portrays the understanding of God's allness and man's awakened sense of gratitude: