Article March 29, 1924 Issue

Love All Men

EMMA H. SAYLES

Many
an otherwise kind person has indulged in what he deems righteous indignation when something has come into his experience which to human sense was unjust and unmerited; and even nations have indulged in resentment and hate toward those nations or peoples who have manifested unlikable traits and used unfair methods in dealing with their fellow-men. Many a sect of religious people has persecuted and unconsciously, perhaps, hated other sects, feeling it was justified in so doing. It matters not what may be the form evil belief takes in individuals, nations, or sects, it does not warrant hate under any circumstance; neither does it insure in any way the destruction of error to meet it with hate; for one error cannot heal another.

The beloved disciple John, in one of his epistles, says, "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer;" and Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, in her book "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 12), says: "Hate no one; for hatred is a plague-spot that spreads its virus and kills at last. If indulged, it masters us; brings suffering upon suffering to its possessor, throughout time and beyond the grave." If for no other reason than as a protection to ourselves, we should watch to keep hate out of thought. It is like a hidden worm, eating its way all unseen and often unsuspected. The master Christian, Jesus the Christ, furnished all mankind with an unfailing remedy for all the seeming evil in the world in his immortal Sermon on the Mount; and Christian people and nations must some time and in some way awaken to and obey this loving admonition, if they expect to prosper and themselves succeed. Selfishness is never successful; neither does personal condemnation bring good. The lifting up in consciousness of the perfect man, the man of God's creating, who has always existed and will through all eternity exist in God, will alone bring happiness. In the perfect universe of God's creating there exist only His ideas, all having the same source and all being like unto their creator,—perfect, whole. Hate does not exist in divine consciousness; therefore, it has no power over God's creation.

One is not called upon through this reasoning to condone and give the stamp of approval to seeming evil; but he must awake to see evil as wrong thinking, of which all must be healed. All are under supposititious mortal law until they awaken to man's sonship with God. In "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 4) Mrs. Eddy says, "A genuine Christian Scientist loves Protestant and Catholic,D. D. and M. D.,—loves all who love God, good; and he loves his enemies." Farther on in the same message (p. 5) she says, "Human will may mesmerize and mislead man; divine wisdom, never." Human will, if entertained, would even deceive one into thinking he is being directed by God. It is a subtle taskmaster; and one needs to be most alert and vigilant in his efforts to keep this archenemy from entering his own citadel of thought. It will often try to deceive one into thinking he can condemn and persecute his brother, all for the sake of good.

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