"The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it" (Prov. 10:22). In these words of tender assurance, persuasive encouragement is found for one to claim and win an enriching, permanent blessing in the solution of each daily experience. An acceptance of each "blessing of the Lord" marks progressive spiritual growth. Whether a task appears trivial or forbidding, its real success depends upon the exercise of the spiritual qualities, which are required to meet and master every situation.
Christian Science awakens the receptive thinker and reveals to him the necessary divine counterfact with which to claim the victory over human discord. While the outward evidence appears as a physical, financial, or moral healing, the actual, fundamental blessing is a firmer, more unassailable understanding of man's oneness, or unity, with illimitable Love, God.
As we steadfastly maintain the wondrous fact of man's present perfection, we find it possible to realize and to hold to the needed corrective or divine idea until the blessing is established. On page 4 of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy refers to this stalwart mental attitude of fidelity to the inaudible dictates of Truth. She says: "The habitual struggle to be always good is unceasing prayer. Its motives are made manifest in the blessings they bring,—blessings which, even if not acknowledged in audible words, attest our worthiness to be partakers of Love."
The immense value of this habitual elevation of thought above the mesmeric appearances of mortal existence lies in the resultant proof that we are thus worthy to be partakers of Love's affluence. When each lesson is truly learned and each blessing is well won, there is no repetition of any experience. That is why there is no sorrow, no return of anguish or suffering, when Love's lesson is really claimed and manifested. Knowing that the victory is already at hand, because the kingdom of heaven, harmony, is within true consciousness, we are spurred onward in our efforts to triumph in every detail.
The comforting knowledge that Love's blessings are never delayed, never held up, but always just waiting to be grasped, removes the frustrating illusion of an unsolved problem. Trials are seen as opportunities to prove once again the power of omni-active Love over the usurping claims of ignorant fear and resistant materiality.
Perhaps it was determination born of a mental refusal to be held victim any longer of the duplicity toward Esau and the fear of Esau's retaliation that led Jacob to exclaim to the spiritual idea which was liberating him (Gen. 32:26), "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." In the disturbed wakefulness of that night, the patriarch may have realized that he could dally no more with the usurpers of peace and security. Many years of spiritual progress while in exile made Jacob ready at last to meet his brother and to master and cast out all long-cherished, fear-producing thoughts. Evil beliefs no longer controlled his thought and action. Angel thoughts of unselfed love and tenderness apparently filled his consciousness. In a radiant spiritual awakening he felt God's infinite goodness and omnipotent love. No wonder he could declare (verse 30), "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved"!
Material, boasting sense was humbled and destroyed before the omnipresent, irresistible might of divine Love. Then armed with newly found spiritual power, Jacob went forth to meet Esau, finding in him also the same irresistible power of Love tenderly reflected. Through his vigorous willingness to face up to and overcome his human problem and through the regeneration of his thinking, Jacob, or Israel, as he was afterward called, became a great blessing to his fellow countrymen. In the Glossary of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy gives a definition of "Jacob" which reads in part (p. 589): "Inspiration; the revelation of Science, in which the so-called material senses yield to the spiritual sense of Life and Love."
Through our yielding to the allness of ever-operative Life and Love, any sense of obstruction or resistance to God's will for boundless good melts away in our experience as it did in Jacob's. If the task before us demands earnest and consistent effort to behold and maintain the perfect man of Love's creating, we too may well take our mental stand and say to spiritual truth, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." By our holding thought steadfastly to the necessary corrective or spiritual idea, which will release thought from illusory bondage, victory is gained. When we faithfully maintain the absolute facts of Christian Science, we win a full blessing.
Do we not always prove in Christian Science that the real blessing is the spiritual corrective or divine idea which, when exercised, inevitably heals the human situation? A simple illustration of this fact proved once again to the writer its fundamental importance in all healing work. One day she felt she had been unjustly treated. As she indulged a sense of resentment, she was suddenly overwhelmed by a severe fever. For a while she tried to overcome this condition as merely physical. But the malady did not yield.
Then, with humble receptivity, she turned wholly to divine Love, opening wide her thought for its spiritual corrective. With deep gratitude she clearly saw that the consciousness of man, the beloved child of God, can express only justice and love. She also saw that in believing that another could be unjust, she herself was making a reality of that which was unreal.
The lesson thus learned—that man, the exact likeness of omnipresent Love, can reflect only Love in every detail—was the rich and permanent blessing gained from that experience. In grasping the blessing with gratitude and praise, the writer was instantaneously healed. And into her rejoicing thought flowed those infinitely comforting words, found on page 506 of Science and Health: "The calm and exalted thought or spiritual apprehension is at peace. Thus the dawn of ideas goes on, forming each successive stage of progress."
In gathering his full blessing from each daily experience, our intrepid Way-shower, Christ Jesus, blessed the whole world. His triumphs show us how to follow closely his example and how to triumph also. And as we rise in individual victories, we too bless our brother man. Thus our battles, well fought and won, prove to be universal blessings, for every truth understood, acknowledged, and lived aids in the destruction of impersonal, impotent error.
What encouragement is ours to hold fast to the determination to garner the harvest of a full blessing from the minutiae of daily-living. With the certainty of success, let us press on to carry through every demonstration to complete fruition, discarding as utterly worthless and unreal any temptation to delay or limit, yes, or even halt the evidencing, to ourselves and to others, of ever-available harmony. Unwaveringly, then, let us silently pray, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me."
