An understanding heart is an appreciative heart. And what like appreciation so enlightens, enriches, and ennobles life? Appreciation of the good, the true, and the beautiful tints one's living with goodness, truth, and beauty, the beauty, truth, and goodness, the love and power, of God. His radiant, reality is infinite, encompassing all true being, maintaining beauty and harmony throughout creation. Yet how little it has been or is being appreciated. With sensibilities deadened by materialism the heart of humanity is blind to the presence and power of Spirit and has little appreciation of its government and glory. Surely the one God, who is Mind, has girded us round about with loveliness and goodness though we have not known Him.

On page 300 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes: "Human logic is awry when it attempts to draw correct spiritual conclusions regarding life from matter. Finite sense has no true appreciation of infinite Principle, God, or His infinite image or reflection, man." In order then to have a true appreciation of that which is real, worthy of appreciation, thought must be turned from the material sense of life to the spiritual, from the finite to the infinite, from person to Principle.

The question is often asked, How can one distinguish between that which is material and that which is spiritual? One way is to determine whether the thoughts that come to us for acceptance proceed from personal sense or from Principle, from the finite or the infinite. All true ideas, all those qualities, that which we should understand, appreciate, and appropriate, partake of the nature of Principle and are infinite in being. Good that is of God is infinite, shared equally by all. Good that is measured by personal sense, "my good," "our good," "their good," bounded by personal possession, is not of Spirit. Good that is not universal, infinite, is not wholly good.

This infinite, impartial goodness of God is the good which Christ Jesus appreciated, appropriated, and revealed. He said of God, "He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." Speaking of Jesus' example, which he left as a legacy to his followers, our Leader says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 165), "But they can neither appreciate nor appropriate his treasures of Truth and Love, until lifted to these by their own growth and experience."

Purified by growth and experience, the Christian Scientist sees that the love which is to be appreciated and appropriated is the reflection of divine Love, spiritual and universal, ever present and ever loving. As one appreciates and appropriates this Love by reflection, he can never' feel unloved or unloving, unwanted or alone. When the law of Love is written in one's heart with understanding and he appreciates its beauty and power, when he is companioned by Love divine, his days are filled with loveliness and grace and he is unafraid.

It is thus, too, that one learns to appreciate and appropriate true beauty and to find his life purified and ennobled by it. Again the test of true beauty is its quality, whether spiritual and eternal or material and fleeting. The Psalmist sang, "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." This beauty of Spirit, the beauty imparted by reflected Love, by joy and peace, the beauty of intelligence and serenity, is imperishable, incorruptible, and fadeless. This is the beauty from which emanates all true grace and comeliness, the beauty which purifies and exalts. An appreciation of true beauty enables one to seek and enjoy that which is best and truly beautiful in the realm of so-called human expression, in music, art, and literature, so that one's living becomes refined, ennobled, and-enriched.

How shall we learn to appreciate and appropriate true riches? In the same way—by growth and experience gained through spiritual understanding. One learns that true riches are indeed spiritual and infinite, equally available to all. Any sense of wealth that is not infinite is not true wealth. Wealth that is finite and material, limited to personal possessions, is fleeting and precarious, unsatisfying, often enslaving and impoverishing rather than liberating and enriching.

Who so rich as he who has at his command the wealth of Mind, the power of wisdom and intelligence, the strength of integrity, the peace of exalted thinking, the joy and freedom of spiritual satisfaction? Happy, indeed, is he who appreciates these infinite treasures of Truth ever unfolding in greater value and richness. He who appropriates and enjoys them can neither fear nor experience poverty, but is rich beyond computation. He knows with the wise man that "the blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it."

On pages 458 and 459 of Science and Health we read: "Christianity causes men to turn naturally from matter to Spirit, as the flower turns from darkness to light. Man then appropriates those things which 'eye hath not seen nor ear heard.'" As one through scientific Christianity turns from darkness to light he learns to appreciate appreciation. He becomes alert to see and understand glimpses of reflected Love shining through the dust and grime of mortal mind and rightly to appraise their value. He sees beauty glinting in unexpected places. He grows rich in qualities and powers of Mind. His appreciation grows ever keener and more satisfying, and he appropriates to himself by reflection the eternal beauties of Soul, the riches of Spirit, the activities of Life, all the practicality and substance of his own true being.

Margaret Morrison