In fall of 1621, a group of surviving Pilgrims held their first Thanksgiving feast. Despite many months of untold hardships, sufferings, and losses in the new world to which they had migrated seeking freedom from religious persecution, those brave and sturdy pioneers paused to thank God for His bounty and goodness. To this gathering came some Indians, who attended the services and offered gratitude for their own harvests. Hostilities, racial beliefs, and color were forgotten as white man and red man united on this occasion. Later, in New England, thanksgiving for bountiful harvests became customary. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln set apart the last Thursday in November as a day of general thanksgiving, a custom that has since been followed.
In our own age a brave New England woman, Mary Baker Eddy, in search of a higher freedom, penetrated alone still unexplored regions of Spirit, and blazed a trail to a higher realm—to the recognition of existence as spiritual. Forsaking the beliefs of generations, she dared to take her stand against an unbelieving world, and in spite of the subtleties of the carnal mind she was able to give to the world the fruits of her discovery Christian Science. Speaking of her experience, she says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 226, 277) : "I saw before me the awful conflict, the Red Sea and the wilderness; but I pressed on through faith in God, trusting Truth, the strong deliverer, to guide me into the land of Christian Science, where fetters fall and the rights of man are fully known and acknowledged." And farther on she continues: "Christian Science raises the standard of liberty and cries: 'Follow me! Escape from the bondage of sickness, sin, and death!' Jesus marked out the way. Citizens of the world, accept the glorious liberty of the children of God,' and be free!" Throughout the world today thousands are answering that call and finding freedom from sin, disease, lack, sorrow, and other false beliefs.
The following experience relates how the members of one family who had accepted the call of Christian Science were blessed through sharing the fruits of their understanding. One week after the family had joyfully established themselves in their new home in the country, the four older children returned from school in tears and bitter despair. They had been taunted, ridiculed, and shunned by their schoolmates because of a racial prejudice. Now these four children attended regularly the Christian Science Sunday School, and they had read many times the statement on page98 of Science and Health: "Beyond the frail premises of human beliefs, above the loosening grasp of creeds, the demonstration of Christian Mind-healing stands a revealed and practical Science. It is imperious throughout all ages as Christ's revelation of Truth, of Life, and of Love, which remains inviolate for every man to understand and to practise;" and again this truth was pointed out to them. The mother told them to go back and love their little friends. "But they do not want us to love them!" pleaded one of the children. "That cannot stop you from loving them," the mother responded firmly.
