GRATITUDE may be said to be appreciation of the fact of man's oneness with the heavenly Father. No one has ever given the world such lessons in gratitude as did Christ Jesus: he was indeed fully aware of the value of the truth which he utilized so unfailingly; he was truly grateful for Life, Truth, and Love, and for a demonstrable knowledge of them. His whole earthly career was one long demonstration of them; and just as he gave to the world higher and purer concepts of the meaning of love, of life, of truth, of good, so he gave an interpretation of gratitude which was so far beyond any narrow and limited understanding of the word, that few grasped it in his day. Even in this our own day, it is only through the spiritual interpretation which Christian Science places upon the words and works of Jesus that the world is beginning to grasp in some measure the spiritual significance of gratitude.
Too often gratitude means to many, as it did to the people of Jesus' day, merely human thanks for some specific favor bestowed upon them, or for some service rendered; and while this is a right use of the word, as far as it goes, and is a long step ahead of blind ingratitude, still, when used in this sense alone, it is lacking in the selfless love which heals, in that love of which Mrs. Eddy writes so beautifully in the textbook,
"Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 192), "Whatever holds human thought in line with unselfed love, receives directly the divine power."
