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GRATITUDE AND SPIRITUAL PERCEPTION

From the February 1963 issue of The Christian Science Journal


"It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High: to shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night" (Ps. 92:1, 2). These beautiful words of the Psalmist reveal gratitude as an innate awareness of man's real nature as the spiritual image and likeness of God.

There is a very definite relationship between gratitude and spiritual' perception. Gratitude increases one's ability to see the things of God as assuredly as seeing or experiencing good impels more gratitude. In a very real sense we see with gratitude. A grateful sense of the all-inclusive nature of God, infinite Love, necessarily excludes matter as illusive and unreal. The perfect Love, or Mind, which fathers the universe, including man, neither knows nor confers the ability to know or experience ingratitude or evil of any description.

Of all men, not only in his day but in ours, Christ Jesus had the keenest spiritual perception and expressed also an unmatched pure sense of gratitude. How instructive is the prayer he uttered before raising Lazarus from the dead, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me" (John 11:41)! Of his spiritual perception, Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (pp. 476, 477): "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."

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