A Christian Scientist who was going through a period of trial woke in the night with a sense of resuming a burden of worry, when, in sweet, quiet admonition, these words came to her troubled thought: "O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together." Accepting the heavenly invitation, she began to think in terms of praise and thanksgiving, and was soon far up the heights of spiritual meditation, above the dark valley of depression where she had lingered so unnecessarily and so long.
Praising God indicates gratitude, the state of thought which wholly acknowledges the divine presence and. power, and so brings instantaneous healing. One of the most serenely beautiful victories recorded in the Old Testament is that found in II Chronicles, where it is related that the hosts of evil, assembled in formidable array, were met by the singing army of Judah, fortified by prayer by reviewing their blessings under God's hand, and filled with the spirit of gratitude. Advancing to meet their allied foes, and praising the beauty of holiness, this little army, relatively small, found the darkly threatening war clouds disappearing before them, and there was no battle after all, because there was nothing left for them to fight. The most aggressive mental suggestion, the most determined and insistent mesmerism reinforced on all sides only by its own false witnesses, became nothing before the brave, joyous stand of the Hebrews. All the pomp and presumption of organized enmity toward good cowered and perished before that song of praise!
Does the need for praise remind us of our new Hymnal? What a wide window towards heaven it opens to us, and how the beauty of holiness pours through in floods of the sunlight of Love! And how it glows back through reflection from glad hearts as we sing! No wonder that the hosts of evil disappear, the walls of our Jerichos fall flat, the gates of brass and bars of iron are sundered, the crooked ways made straight and "the rough places plain," before the entire acknowledgment of God as the only presence and power! No wonder that the final step in the healing of many an obdurate case has been taken through lifting thought clear above the contemplation of matter and. in spite of material sense testimony, deliberately singing praise to God for what we know to be true.
