We Thank Our Father

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The Last Written Article by the Trustees

Written for The Christian Science Monitor Thursday, November 24, 1921

(Thanksgiving Day)

DAY OF PRINTING (in Christian Science Monitor) OF “FINDING OF FULL BENCH”

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE in its infinite meaning and its tender, invincible power to heal, is really everywhere, and so in every place that one can conceive of there is today cause for thanksgiving. Probably the casual reader would not quite understand this, and if so it would be because he did not comprehend the significance of Christian Science. It is not a mere world system of religion, of healing, of publication of literature, and so on. It is infinite and unlimited, and when that is said one is obviously not speaking of “the things which are seen” but of the “things which are not seen.” In simple words, Christian Science is the scientific knowledge of God. It is the manifestation of infinite Mind or God, and the manifestation of God is the Christ. The Christ is wholly apart from matter and is everywhere present, because there can be no bounds to that which manifests the boundless. Here, then, is obviously the reason why Christian Science is everywhere, and why in its absolute sense, which is really the only sense of it, it is invincible.

In the first century the divine idea of infinite Mind, or God, appeared to men in the form which could be comprehended by them, for only in that manner could they be shown the way to deliver themselves from the incubus of material beliefs which make up an utterly false sense of existence. Spiritual existence, life in Mind, is the only real living. Jesus of Nazareth constituted the human perception of the divine idea, which is simply the Christ. In the nineteenth century this idea, after having been hidden under materiality for centuries, reappeared when in 1866 Christian Science was discovered. The discovery of this Science by Mary Baker Eddy in that year was the discovery of the infinite idea of God or divine Mind and it was discerned by her upon being healed of an injury which was pronounced fatal. This idea has unfolded to the world in just the form in which it would do the most good in this hour to humanity, and that form is Christian Science. But of course, since the idea is infinite, the ways of its appearing are infinite, and for that reason Christian Science is constantly unfolding. And that is the reason why this Science cannot possibly be thought of as bounded by a world system of religion, nor by any number of buildings, members, or indeed by anything whatsoever that is finite and limited. It is the pure full-flooded activity of infinite Principle, of immeasurable Mind. That is the reason why all the activities of Christian Science are available to heal in every place, and why men in the most out-of-the-way localities can give unceasing thanks today and always for this beneficence. The appearing of Christian Science is in myriad forms and in just the way it is most needed. As far as thought can reach, and of course infinite thought expressing Mind reaches everywhere, all is divine Mind and its idea. Right at hand, at any moment or in any spot that anyone can name, there is the loving, all-powerful ministration of the Spirit blessing the true idea or spiritual man.

A man could not, therefore limit Christian Science. Christian Science is the revelation of infinite good, and it can no more be halted than can God Himself, who is the Principle of this divine idea. The destiny of Christian Science is to defeat the world, by the loving, merciful deliverance of it from its sickness and sin and from all its tears. This destiny depends upon no man or set of men. It depends upon and is the outcome of the allness and invincibility of Principle, the Father-Mother God.

The world and all its power is as nothing in the face of the spiritual idea which is the divine Science of God. An attempt was made in the first century to bury the Christ-idea in a tomb, that is, suppositional evil in the form in which it then was strove to effect this by crucifying, entombing and sealing-in the man who taught this idea. Any attempt to bury the infinite idea in a tomb of materiality in the twentieth century results in just as much of a fiasco as it did in the first, when Christ Jesus rose from the dead and founded the Christianity which preserved the truth about God sufficiently for its discovery in the nineteenth century. For it was the very words which Christ Jesus said, “shall not pass away” and which Mary Baker Eddy read, at the time of her asserted fatal injury, in 1866, that revealed again the divine idea of healing and holiness. These words are found in Matthew ix. 2, and relate the healing of the palsied man.

Christian Science in its pure meaning is the charity, the love that “seeketh not her own.” This love is undermining the selfishness of the world. Proofs that it is doing so and that open or hidden purposes to bury it are forever foreordained to oblivion are abundant, and the method of discovering them is found in that saying of thanksgiving uttered by Mrs. Eddy, when she says: “We thank our Father that to-day the uncremated fossils of material systems, already charred, are fast fading into ashes; and that man will ere long stop trusting where there is no trust, and gorging his faith with skill proved a million times unskilful.” (“The People’s Idea of God,” p. 8.) What the proofs are could almost be answered by the kindergarten, with the ABCs of the past seven years before it. And what happened November 12 in the capital city of the New World is a reliable primer. Just how all this is going on is illustrated by that old fable of Æsop wherein is found the story of the contest between the sun and the wind. Like the warm rays of the sun, the blessed power of divine metaphysics is making the world take off its coat of darkness and wrongdoing, where the winds of material methods have always failed.

There could be no greater occasion for thanksgiving than now, and assuredly, rejoicing for the allness of good and its expression continues forever. The Pilgrims in America, who in celebrating a period of thanksgiving just three hundred years ago this fall established Thanksgiving Day for a great nation, discerned something of the meaning of an ever-present God and an ever-present Christ, who would be with them wherever they went. For God to them was as surely available for help on a little ship in the Atlantic as in the English Channel, and in America as in England. Had they but known it, it was unlimited Mind alone that could satisfy such a requirement of an ever-present God and His Christ. In “Pulpit and Press,” Mrs. Eddy, after speaking of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, writes this: “Christian Scientists, you have planted your standard on the rock of Christ, the true, the spiritual idea,-the chief corner-stone in the house of our God. And our Master said: ‘The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.’ If you are less appreciated to-day than your forefathers, wait-for if you are as devout as they, and more scientific, as progress certainly demands, your plant is immortal.” (Page 10.)

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Last Written Article in the Christian Science Monitor, Home Forum Page,

by the Trustees of the Christian Science Publishing Society.

Written for The Christian Science Monitor

Monday, January 30. 1922

WHAT is the basis of humanity’s friendships? It should really be the desire to serve unselfishly, wisely, and in accord with the gentle requirements of divine Science. But what proportion of humanity recognizes that basis? Some have friends for the use they may be as means to advancement in social, business and governmental circles. This, assuredly, is a travesty on friendship. For others friends are merely an antidote to loneliness and lack of companionship. In other cases they are taken simply as a matter of course, as a part of everyday, workaday life. Few probably have friends entirely for the purpose of doing good to them.

A friend is really one toward whom love and right doing are owed. On this basis one must maintain unity with all men, and so utilize one of the two Great Commandments, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Before such splendid, universal friendship the puny relationships of the world take themselves off. And the great motive of mankind should be to enlarge the borders of friendship and come into view of that mighty association which is unity of man with divine Principle, idea always together with Mind. This is a far greater friendship than even the best example of men’s universal fellowship. It is the eternal and loving being together of Mind and His pure reflection. Love, the one infinite God, is actuated by the utmost affection for its own expression, and the image of God, reflecting Mind as similitude, has this same fathomless affection.

What might be called the togetherness of divine intelligence or infinite Spirit and its likeness is a pattern by which men can mold their own companionships. Mind and idea are forever in company, a companionship that is real and substantial and all-pervading today and always. Man looking to Mind for life, enjoys this being together, this union of affections that never ends. And any individual, deserted perhaps, or disdained, may look into Mind and possess beauties and depths of friendship he has never known before, a fellowship that is based on eternity, and backed by the unending resources of the greatest friend man can ever have, the infinite Mind or God. This friendship has not that unavoidable weakness that is of the world’s kind, of which Mrs. Eddy writes on page 9 of “Miscellaneous Writings,” where she says: “Whom we call friends seem to sweeten life’s cup and to fill it with the nectar of the gods. We lift this cup to our lips; but it slips from our grasp, to fall in fragments before our eyes.”

Mortals must widen their friendship to be more and more like the association of which Mind is aware. Human friendship is most often carried on through the medium of conversation, written or spoken. But conversation first is formed in thought before utterance in speech. So that thought is really the basis of intercourse. Talking is only one way of conveying what one thinks. Sometimes gestures, facial expression, and so on, are the means of revealing what one is thinking. In fact, talking is very frequently a drag on true intercourse between two persons conversing, for the carnal mind claims that one cannot always find the effective means in words by which to explain one’s meaning. Thence arise misunderstandings. And assuredly, conversation sometimes is not at all expressive of what the thoughts are, as when a converser is seeking to conceal his real sentiments. Christ Jesus, being nearer in his origin to pure Mind as cause and Father-Mother than any other mortal, based his life to a remarkable degree upon Mind. He said, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of”; he took his rest at night in communion with divine Mind on the Mount of Olives, for he said that the Son of man hath not where to lay his head; he made instantaneous journeys across a lake and out of the temple, traveling as spontaneous thought travels, as rapidly as one in New York could think of London; and the Bible frequently shows that in his conversation he depended not at all upon outward human utterance. Through his spiritual understanding he continually read the thoughts of the people he was with, answering unuttered questions and doubts and fears, and often revealing to the astonished Pharisees exactly what their evil meditation was. When Mary Magdalene came to Jesus to be healed, the Pharisee, Simon, spake “within himself” that the Master should have known she was a sinner. “And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee,” and proceeded to tell the story of the two debtors.

And of course Moses and Christ Jesus and others in ancient times held communication with God Himself, in unity with Mind, and at times Mind’s presence was made known as actual sound to those who were with Moses or with Jesus. For on Mount Horeb when Moses talked with God the people heard the “voice of the words,” but they saw no similitude. And at the time of the transfiguration, when the Master was with Peter, James, and John, “behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” And in the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mary Baker Eddy assures us that “The Soul-inspired patriarchs heard the voice of Truth, and talked with God as consciously as man talks with man” (p. 308), and in another place she says, “Before human knowledge dipped to its depths into a false sense of things,-into belief in material origins which discard the one Mind and true source of being,-it is possible that the impressions from Truth were as distinct as sound, and that they came as sound to the primitive prophets.” (Pages 213 and 214.)

Because of all this it can readily be seen that with the infinity of Mind in contemplation, one need not necessarily travel a great distance to enjoy beautiful scenery, to make the most of summer’s beauties and so on. Unlimited consciousness or Spirit is ever-present allness and therein is found wholly satisfying companionship, beauty, animation and unceasing comfort. Comprehension of this truth would not necessarily result in withdrawal from society, but, on the contrary, might bring to one a great increase in one’s list of friends whom he could see and help and by whom he could be assisted. It might, on the other hand, take one into joyful, prolific solitude, as it did take Mary Baker Eddy, a solitude from which came the perfected gift of Christian Science for the world.