INAUGURATED by the Pilgrim Fathers in gratitude for divine protection and bounty, the custom of setting apart one day in the year for a special service of prayer and thanksgiving to God is one that may well be perpetuated. To be reminded even for a few brief hours that "every good gift and every perfect gift is from above" is surely better than utterly to ignore one's obligations, and to listen to the Thanksgiving service can but quicken every thoughtful man and woman to a keener and more lasting appreciation of their daily and hourly indebtedness to the great Giver for all that they have and are, and likewise to the necessity and fitness of continuous gratitude therefor.
Christian Scientists are more and more coming to recognize and appropriate for themselves the broader concept of gratitude as an expression of thanksgiving which has been opened up for them in the teachings of Christian Science. As Mrs. Eddy significantly says, "Action expresses more gratitude than speech" (Science and Health, p. 3). He who is truly grateful for blessings received may not say very much about it in public, but we find him making a practical exemplification of the Master's teaching, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Who indeed could bring himself to accept daily benefactions from one whom he could not possibly repay in kind, did he not embrace every opportunity to pass the kindness along to one more needy than himself ! And yet there is many a one whose existence is that of the barren fig-tree because he has not learned to be truly grateful.
The chief obstacle to gratitude seems to be an inability to perceive that one really has anything to be grateful for. There is no life so poor, so barren, or so filled with sorrow and suffering, that patient research will not bring to light some token of the Father's care for His little ones. Self pity may urge that no one else was ever so afflicted, yet always there is some one to whom our burden would seem light, always some one in whose woes we can forget our own. The swiftest and surest cure for a grievous hurt, whether to mind, body, or estate, is to minister to another's need and discover thereby with how much we are still blessed.
