Although men have preached the desirability of gratitude, although they have sung of its beauties and loveliness, its duties as well as its advantages have not always been realized; but most prominent of all has been the feeling in the hearts of multitudes of a lack of cause for this virtue. All too frequently men have gone on, blind to the blessings which have been appearing constantly around them. Indeed, so dull of comprehension have they been that these choice gifts have often been trampled under foot or tossed ruthlessly aside all unnoticed.
The world at large is not yet awake to the fact that all good comes from God, that He is the alone Giver, and that He has only good to give. The priceless value of all real blessing has therefore not been recognized, and hearts have been mute when glad songs of thanksgiving should have been ascending to the Most High. How rarely have even devout Christians discovered that without gratitude to the Giver there can be no real appreciation of the gift! It is the revelation of Christian Science which is teaching to-day the incomparable value of gratitude and the infinite reasons for its expression.
"To kindle all minds with a gleam of gratitude, the new idea that comes welling up from infinite Truth needs to be understood. The seer of this age should be a sage." Thus writes Mrs. Eddy in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 1); and then she goes on to say: "Humility is the stepping-stone to a higher recognition of Deity. The mounting sense gathers fresh forms and strange fire from the ashes of dissolving self, and drops the world." It is therefore humility which opens the door to the understanding of God's beneficence; for it is only as selfishness and self-esteem are relinquished that one can gain that absolute sense of dependence on God which opens one's eyes to the infinite good perpetually flowing from God to man.
