Question: Am I really grateful for the blessings that God has given me?

Answer: Yes, I am thankful for the improvement that prayer has brought to my health, job, and personal relations.

Question: But isn't there a higher gratitude than merely being thankful for material benefits?

Answer: Yes. True gratitude includes an acknowledgment of the perfection that is eternally man's as the reflection of God.

Let's expand on these concepts by considering a specific case.

When a friend who had been ill for some time began to improve, I rejoiced in the evidence of better health—and why not? Nothing wrong with that. But spiritual sense told me that there was something lacking in my response. Wasn't I overlooking a deeper and more important aspect of my friend's improvement? Then I saw there was a more vital, Christianly scientific response required. I could and should rejoice that my friend was not and never had been less than a perfect idea of God.

I began to insist that there had never been a cause apart from God—a cause that could inflict on the spiritual child of a perfect creator any condition unlike the nature of his Father, divine Love. No imperfect cause; therefore, no imperfect effect. Of course, the human evidence of improvement did, and properly should, evoke gratitude. Mrs. Eddy highlights the importance of recognizing good when she asks: "Are we really grateful for the good already received? Then we shall avail ourselves of the blessings we have, and thus be fitted to receive more." ^{Science and Health, p. 3;} But time is no element in experiencing more good. It is spiritualized consciousness that brings perfection to light. In Science and Health, next to the marginal heading "Spiritualized consciousness" we find Mrs. Eddy's words: "Become conscious for a single moment that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual,—neither in nor of matter,—and the body will then utter no complaints. If suffering from a belief in sickness, you will find yourself suddenly well." ^{ibid., p. 14;} I saw that my gratitude for the physical improvement had to be accompanied by the acknowledgment that the true (and only) selfhood of any individual is good, harmonious, and complete now.

Look at it this way: When we add five and five we don't expect that the total first reaches seven, then eight, and finally ten. No more should we expect an extended period of convalescence, or healing by grudging degrees. The joyous accounts of Christ Jesus' instantaneous cures in the Bible show that time is not a factor in healing. In more than one instance, Jesus expressed verbal thanks even before the physical evidence of healing appeared. Once was when he fed the multitude with what seemed to be a woefully inadequate amount of bread and fish. ^{See Matt. 15:32—38;} Another time was when he raised Lazarus from the dead. His words rang out as a rousing reminder that the expression of gratitude may well be a primary element in spiritual healing: "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me." ^{John 11:41;}

There is a counterfeit of true gratitude. Aren't we occasionally tricked into at least a semblance of the Pharisee's self-righteous scorn of the publican's humble status? ^{See Luke 18:9—14 .} Perhaps not in such an overt manner; but do we ever find ourselves feeling thankful, in a superior sort of way, that the crime, the political turmoil, the ravages of nature that are afflicting "those people over there" are not touching us? How much better to affirm the ever-presence of good, of an all-embracing Principle, God, who is never the author of calamitous conditions, either here or "over there."

Our admission that harm can come to others, along with a feeling of thankful relief that we are spared the destructive results of war, crime, or weather, falls far short of true gratitude for all encompassing good. Our immediate and firm response to televised or printed reports of disaster anywhere must be a disclaimer: insistence that such so-called "acts of God" constitute a mortal antipode of the entirely harmonious operation of divine Principle. When we completely disconnect in thought the evidence of calamity or crisis from the universe of Spirit, we find that the physical forces lose their power to frighten us. And in proportion as the recognition of spiritual reality replaces our acceptance of disaster, we will not only help free ourselves from matter's destructiveness but benefit the world as well.

Since gratitude is not only the recognition of good that has appeared humanly but also an acknowledgment of the spiritual perfection that man expresses as God's likeness, it is a vital element in prayer, or metaphysical treatment. Christian Scientists have learned that the prayer that heals usually includes both denial and affirmation—denial of the testimony of the material senses and affirmation of what is spiritually true of man as the manifestation of God. These two fundamental ingredients of Christian Science treatment join naturally with gratitude.

Can we successfully deny the material senses, which may be telling us that disease or lack is our lot, without feeling a deep thankfulness that we are really not subject to these travesties of our true selfhood as the expression of infinite Mind? As we affirm with unwavering conviction the spiritual status of ourselves and others, it is impossible not to feel a welling up of profound gratitude that the perfection of being is ours to claim. Gratitude, then, is inseparable from affirmation, and even denial. It's essential to the healing force that Christian Science is offering mankind as the answer to all human problems. Yes, true gratitude includes rejoicing for present good and spiritual acknowledgment of perfection that is already present and has never been absent.