Article July 28, 1973 Issue

"I wish I could do more for you"

JANE CLARK WALKER

Have you ever wished you had more to give? You might like give the down payment on a house, your church really generous contribution, the flood victims substantial help. They need it, and it would give you so much pleasure to play the role of bountiful giver.

It is right to feel generous, and it is right to give wisely. But a self-indulgent personal sense of giving does not always have enough to give, nor the intelligence to give wisely. This is because it is based on a limited concept of the source of all good, God, and a limited concept of His image and likeness, man.

Mary Baker Eddy once wrote in a letter to a young Christian Scientist, "'I wish I could do more for you, but that is selfish for it would give me much pleasure.'" There was no hypocrisy in this, no withholding of any good thing. She continued to have a warm interest in the young man's welfare. But there was a recognition that giving can be self-indulgent and can limit the gift and the giver. She went on to say, "'Let me wish only that my prayers for you are righteous, then I know the result will rest in sweet hope of your prosperity, growth in grace, and the knowledge of infinite Love, where no arrow wounds the dove, where are no partings, no pain.'"^{We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, First Series, pp. 63, 64;}

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