Article November 20, 1948 Issue

TESTIMONIES FOR THANKSGIVING DAY

GEORGINA TENNANT

As we become interested in Christian Science, we learn how to worship spiritually and to cease to worship materially. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 140), "We worship spiritually, only as we cease to worship materially." In so doing, we find that spiritual beauty far transcends the beauty of ancient religious ceremonies.

What an occasion for beauty, for instance, is a harvest festival, with its graceful sheaves of grain, shiny red apples, bunches of purple grapes, and giant yellow pumpkins! Both achievement and color are represented in these offerings selected with care from the harvest of the year's toil and brought in thanksgiving to God. It has been the custom of mankind from time immemorial to return thanks to God for the fruits of the harvest. So in the Bible (Genesis 4) we read that Cain and Abel brought of their first fruits offerings to the Lord.

In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy speaks of Cain as the type of mortal and material man and says of him (pp. 540, 541): "Material in origin and sense, he brings a material offering to God. Abel takes his offering from the firstlings of the flock. A lamb is a more animate form of existence, and more nearly resembles a mind-offering than does Cain's fruit." The Christian Scientist's offering to God is a mind offering, the first fruits of his spiritual growth and understanding. If the material offerings gathered at a harvest festival express so much beauty, color, and skill, should not the Christian Scientist's mind-offering excel in loveliness?

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