Gratitude may be defined as the conscious capacity to...

Clarke McCue

Gratitude may be defined as the conscious capacity to give thanks. Once the capacity is realized, its expression increases by arithmetical progression; for to possess that which once we knew not, is to give heed to the voice of Love, and to give hourly and daily heed to the voice of divine Love is to take on some understanding of the infinite. The Master said, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," and so I would speak of my own personal gratitude.

For sixteen years I was a slave to the use of liquor, and as such I endured all the hideous dreams of an awful servitude. One of the dreams that deceived me was the thought that whisky was a necessity to my existence, that it added virility to my work (that of a newspaper man), stimulus to my energy, and life to my nerves, overwrought by what I then thought was labor. Indeed, the bottle was the panacea for all fancied ills, and in the end stole my intellect, my time, my manhood, my friends, and worst of all, my self-respect. At last the time came when the lie could deceive no longer. I had reached the ultimate. My means were gone, regular employment was an impossibility, for no one would trust me, and my noble wife was suffering untold agony, wavering between loyalty to her husband and duty to herself. I was tottering on the brink of the gutter, the future bearing no hope, the present naught but damnation, the past unutterable.

About two weeks before the climax came, I met an acquaintance of my youth who I knew had been formerly a drinker. He was sober, prosperous, and his countenance was one of peace and content. If my own case was a characteristic one,—and I have every reason to believe that it was, for whisky tells the same lies to each of its victims,—I had long had an ambition to be a sober man, but could never accomplish the first step toward the attainment of that ambition. I reasoned, Surely if he has found a way to rid himself of whisky, why may not I? At any rate he told me, and gave me the name of his practitioner, and somehow or other the expression "Christian Science" did not then seem to be laden with the repugnance it once had.

One afternoon I found myself in a saloon after a debauch of the worst kind I had ever indulged. I cogitated: "Quid nunc?" I was down to my last two nickels in money, but I hastened to a telephone and called up the practitioner whose name I had been given; told him who and what I was; why and how I happened to call him, and asked him if I might not go out to his house, it being after his office hours. "Why not wait until tomorrow?" he asked. "I can't," I said. "If I should, I might change my mind." When I walked down the front steps of his house, entered forty minutes before, my head was high, my breast was full of a lightness I never before had known, my heart was singing a song, the whole world looked as if it had been washed clean of the unsightly, and existence was one of freedom, fearlessness, goodness, truth, and love. In those few minutes God had revealed Himself, the Christ had whispered, and, behold! a prodigal whose belly had been sated with the husks had been given new raiment, his sense supplied with fulness, and he had been vouchsafed an heritage greater than that of potentate. Truly the heavenly dove had descended! Since that time I have had no desire other than so to live that each instant shall be one of gratitude; that each step shall be one more upward; that each thought shall be one purer; that each heart-beat shall be one more of love.

Gratitude? If all the words within the vocabulary of every tongue used by mortals expressed the thought of gratitude, and each were intensified a thousandfold, all would be poor to express my feelings. To have been released from a thraldom such as was mine, and given a life eternal, with its joy, its faith, its hope, its truth, is surely quite sufficient ground for one to feel an infinitude of gratitude. Hand in hand my wife and I are daily growing and learning to live. Once more I am at regular work in a responsible editorial position; my eyes are bright, my speech is clear; my friends are many, and the daily demonstrations of the gentle might of Love are sometimes startling but always sublimely beautiful—beautifully sublime. To God I tender a heart overflowing with gratitude; upon the Christ I keep my eyes; to the world I give my daily life; and last, but far from least, I give tenderest veneration to the handmaid of His choice and thanks for her inestimable book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," for the Lord hath surely lifted the light of His countenance upon our Leader, who has enabled us to see the truth which is a light unto our feet. Again, all glory and praise and thanks be unto God.—Clarke McCue, Kansas City, Mo.

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