Published in the Christian Science Journal, September, 1901

GRATITUDE

BY HERBERT W. EUSTACE

 

OF all the virtues, can there be found one more prolific of quiet, peaceful happiness, more overflowing with love and kindness, than gratitude?
      This subject has been frequently in my thought, and more especially so since last summer.  When on my vacation, one Sunday evening it was my privilege to hear a learned bishop of the Episcopal Church deliver a sermon to a class of young people who had just been confirmed.  In his address he stated that in his old parish, in one of the large eastern cities,-a parish that contained some of the best Christian workers he had ever known,-on the reading desks in the church were the old prayer-books that had been there for over a century, they were still kept on the desks, but were not then being used, more modern ones having replaced them.
      One day the thought came to him to look over these old books, and see what prayers to God had been most frequently used.  First he turned to the prayers for help for the sick, for the safety of those at sea, and for the many other blessings mortals so urgently desire; all these prayers were black with finger-marks, showing at once how much they had been used.  He then turned to the prayers of thanksgiving to God for the blessings specially vouchsafed unto them, and he was amazed, he said, to find that these prayers of deep gratitude were as clean as any pages in the book, showing, also at once, how little they had been used.  There was every evidence to show how constantly they had prayed to God for what they desired, but there was no evidence to show that they had expressed any gratitude for the blessings received.
      I felt when I heard this, much as King David must have felt when the prophet Nathan said to him, “Thou art the man,”-smitten.  Are we any of us truly grateful for all the blessings that infinite Love is showering on us?  Are we not too often like the ten lepers whom Jesus healed, only one of whom came back to render thanks? or are we as good?  Out of ten blessings do we render thanks for even one?  How many times do we allow error to whisper to us, when some prayer is answered, that it just happened so, or that we should have gotten well anyway, and we look no further than this.  We are content that we have what we wanted, or that we are well; our prayer of thanksgiving is not made, we have robbed God of what rightfully belongs to Him-a grateful heart-and we have furthermore denied the Bible, for we are there told, “Every good gift and ever perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights,” and in place of recognizing this, we have given to “chance” the thanks due to God.  What must finally be the result of this living at the mercy of chance?  Sooner or later an avalanche comes upon us, and in the past not having recognized the source of all help and goodness, and that the prayer of the righteous availeth much, our faith in omnipotent aid is so weakened, if not entirely destroyed, that we sink beneath the load, not seeing the arms of divine Love ever bearing us up and protecting us from very evil.  The hand to save is always present, but “We close our eyes and call it night.”
      Dear friends, let us be ever ready to acknowledge our heavenly Father’s love and care, not in one way only, but in every way; let us turn to Him alone with our psalm of thanksgiving for everything that comes into our lives; with St. Paul let us rejoice at infirmities, reproaches, necessities, persecutions, and distresses for Christ’s sake, ‘remembering “this selfsame God is our Helper. . . . He has mercy upon us, and guides every event of our careers” (Unity of Good, p. 4).  If we do this we will learn over and over again, that the seeming distresses and necessities are angels entertained unawares, and that Love has been with us all the time.
      What a glorious thought this is, that we live in Love!  Could we possibly ask for more?  Can we express our gratitude in anything less than earnest, consecrated lives?  Consecrated to God, striving to have the same Mind in us that was also in Christ Jesus, consecrated to the steadfast purpose of proving that God’s kingdom has indeed come on earth, as in heaven.
      When I look back over the past seven years of my life, and see how, through the study of our text-book, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” I have become a completely changed man, my heart overflows with gratitude, and is too full for words.  “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise:  be thankful unto Him, and bless His name.” 

 

Right Foundation
Written for The Christian Science Monitor
Tuesday, August 5, 1919
By
Herbert W. Eustace

WHEN one passes through the streets of a modern city and beholds on every side towering structures of brick and stone, concrete and steel, it is not always present to the thought that the foundation on which the “skyscraper” rests extends far below the ground, in some cases nearly as far as the building reaches above the level of the earth.  For weeks and months the builder and his men toiled below the surface of the earth, making secure the foundations on which the great building was to rest.  At the time this work did not appear to the passerby in the street to be of great importance.  There was little to show for it, but every architect and builder knows that probably the most important element in their work is to have a foundation that will carry safely the type of building to be erected.
      When one observes in human life the serene Christian character that stands unmoved amid the storms of sense, when the world around about seems to rock and sway, he may be sure that one has spent time and faith and labor in laying, line upon line, little by little, a firm foundation of daily walking with God.  There is no royal road to understanding the law of good, of God, divine Principle.  Even Christian Science, in all its simplicity, whose great truths may be and are grasped and applied by the untutored child, requires something more than the belief that there is a short cut, an easy way to “get religion,” for, as the wise man said, “with all thy getting get understanding.”
      “The foundational facts of Christian Science,” says its Discoverer and Founder Mary Baker Eddy, “are gathered from the supremacy of spiritual law and its antagonism to every supposed material law.”  (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 200.)  Now Christian Science finds mortals living in a universe of “supposed material law.”  Material law is not “supposed” to the uninstructed human mind, for has not that mind been conceived in, and brought up in every conceivable belief in the power and reality of matter and its laws?  To the one who has unquestionably accepted the dictums of material law, through no other reason than that it has been his daily environment and nothing has taken place to disturb his acquiescence in the common beliefs of mankind, the characterization of all these laws as “supposed” appears as little less than absurd.  But the fact remains that Mrs. Eddy herself was, previous to her discovery, in the same plight as other human beings, and the steps she took upward, until she reached the point of knowing and proving the supremacy of spiritual law may be traced in her writings and are most helpful to the seeker for the whole truth.
      The truth of being cannot be achieved minus the Scriptures.  The Bible is the foundation of all faith that has lifted humanity upward.  Mrs. Eddy did not invent a new system of reasoning in the sense that she departed from the facts laid down in the Bible.  It was to the Bible that she turned for the healing that revealed to her the divine Principle, the power that raised her from a supposedly fatal illness and restored her to a life of usefulness and helpfulness in the world.  All this is because the Scriptures contain the revelation of God, and, as Paul declares, “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
      The great Exemplar in Christianity and Christian Science is Christ Jesus. He is the Way-shower, and his life exemplifies the highest human attainment in demonstration of the supremacy of spiritual law.  No material law remained law in his presence.  It is an axiom that a broken law is not law, for true law cannot be set aside.  Yet walking on the water, making it become wine, the dissolution of solid walls, the overcoming of lameness, leprosy, palsy and death itself, were only some outstanding acts in a long ministry of unparalleled healing works. And when we remember that Jesus distinctly called upon all who follow him to do the works that he did, and that his early followers did actually approximate his healing and saving mission, there can be no doubt that the Master understood and applied a higher law than any having a material basis, and that he knew that every man could learn to apply and demonstrate the higher, spiritual law.
      It was Mrs. Eddy’s perception of the universal law of God back of Jesus’ mission, the law that had been revealed to and periodically demonstrated by the prophets before the first century, that led her to deny the validity of material law and to found Christian Science.  Here are plain words of hers on page 269 of the textbook of Christian Science, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”:  “The testimony of the material senses is neither absolute nor divine.  I therefore plant myself unreservedly on the teachings of Jesus, of his apostles, of the prophets, and on the testimony of the Science of Mind.  Other foundations there are none.  All other systems-systems based wholly or partly on knowledge gained through the material senses-are reeds shaken by the wind, not houses built on the rock.”
      More and more the world is coming to accept the God-given foundation on which Mrs. Eddy built the structure of Christian Science.  True the churches had always nominally accepted the Scriptures and acknowledged the power of God to save from sin.  But accompanying that there was almost complete obscuration of the healing works of him whose title named Christianity, and without any reason that would stand when put to the test of logic.  There was an element lacking in the nineteenth century churches that was present in abundance in the universal church triumphant that Christ Jesus came to establish.  “The supremacy of Spirit was the foundation on which Jesus built” (Science and Health, p. 138), and the supremacy of Spirit will ever be found to be the only basis on which all mankind may unite and maintain that unity in the works of salvation performed by Jesus and his disciples, preaching the gospel and healing the sick.  The Prophet Isaiah knew the value of right foundation in the Word of God, and it is significant that he who foretold the coming of the Messiah and divined his mission, also wrote:  “Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.”