Christian Science lifts our concept of thanksgiving to the contemplation of the ideas of God. These spiritual ideas, conceived and expressed by the divine Mind, are the substance and form of true being. They are spiritual, not material. They are eternal, timeless. They are ever and everywhere present. So instead of merely expressing thanks for good human events, for freedoms gained, for lives preserved or saved, for human relationships harmonized, for necessities supplied, we can recognize the substance of all good in divine Mind and its ideas. And this joyful recognition— true thanksgiving—brings healing.
Not that we should be ungrateful for the good things that have come to us in any form. But with the Science of Christ, Truth, we can know the spiritual reality of all good and find ourselves in it. And the joy we know is more than joy for a moment, more than joy because things have been good in the past hours or years, but joy for unchanging, immortal Truth, joy for our own being as the reflection of the Divine Being.
Scientific thanksgiving is immortal. Any acknowledgment of the allness of God, Life, Truth, Love, is immortal consciousness. I read recently of the speculations of some natural scientists that the entire universe as we know it will be destroyed in ten billion years. As long ahead as that seems, the thought of the total end of life as we now know it is a direct contradiction of the truth that Life is immortal. Love will not stop even in ten billion years. Truth is not material gases and forces and bodies, organized or disorganized; it is divine Mind, Life, Love, God. Man is the reflection of Mind. The universe is not self-existent; it is not matter; it is idea. Mary Baker Eddy, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, defines man as "the compound idea of infinite Spirit; the spiritual image and likeness of God; the full representation of Mind."Science and Health, p. 591;
