"Divine Love always has met, and always will meet, every human need"*

JOSEPH G. MANN.

Recently, while earnestly conversing with a fellow-student about the urgent want, seen and felt everywhere outside of Christian Science, the above oft-repeated and overflowing quotation from our text-book brought to me a new burst of light. Having in mind relief from some pressing circumstances,—human necessities as judged from the standpoint of the physical senses,—my friend, with the usual complacent and selfish expectation, quoted this well-proved and unselfish promise. While in deep reflection and almost before realizing what I was saying, I answered: "Yes; divine Love meets every human need, and the human need is to love, and always to reflect Love."

Would I could tell the unfolding to me of the spirit and substance of that text since this new dawning! The difference between my present sense of those inspired words, and my past, is the difference between selflessness and selfishness.

Now my "every human need" is to strive for, and to gain, that true sense of love which is the reflection of Love,—of God. This love "seeketh not her own," but enables me to understand the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, and to realize with St. Paul that the greatest of all attainments, which "now abideth," is love. When starting from this highest standpoint of "human need, everything is changed for the better; and the good effect upon mankind generally is clearly shown in Science and Health (page 518), in that paragraph, so filled with promise, containing the sentence, "Blessed is that mortal who seeth his brother's need and supplieth it, seeking his own in another's good."

In the consecrated life of our beloved Leader we have the exemplification of her own words, and the proof that she is following the Master, who lived but to give,—a constant reflection of Love. He said to his disciples: "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another" (John, 13:34).

Through the full and living sense of the Love that is God, Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead, and so brought joy to mortals. The Christian world rejoices in the endless blessings that have come through the Master's love,—this healing presence. Do even the Christian Scientists of to-day realize that the same benign love which brought joy to the sisters of Lazarus when it raised their brother from the dead, may have seemed cruel to Peter, when Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men"? (Mark, 8:33). No Christian to-day doubts that the dear Master always understood what was needed, and so spake and gave accordingly; though, to the sinner, he did not always appear to be actuated by Love, that Love which healed the sick and the sinner.

Christian Science awakens us to the sense of Love possessed by Jesus,—the sense that is "impartial, impersonal, and pure." This is our need, and we are satisfied with nothing less. This Christ-like sense has healed us of sickness, and will heal us of all sin, and so deliver us from the cause, and thereby forestall the further effects, of evil,—whether poverty or pain.

Doubtless Peter was more pleased when his wife's mother was healed of the fever by the Master, than when he received from him such a scorching rebuke for his presumption, and when, in his puerility, he would have rebuked his Master. That Peter wisely bore, and so profited by, the severe side of love, is seen in that he afterwards received the "keys of the kingdom," and emulated his Master in raising the dead.

So shall we progress to greater Christian ability to do good, provided we have love enough to "murmur not over Truth, if we find its digestion bitter" (Science and Health, p. 559).

So long as we are deceived into thinking that something less than divine Love will satisfy—meet the desire—we shall not call for Love; and, looking for other ways and means will not compensate for our ignorance of failure to look aright. We must be unselfish enough to see there is nothing in this world that we need but a true sense of divine Love. The more this human need is felt, the more willingly do we grapple with the hardest problems, accept, and even seek, self-sacrificing tasks which lead upward to love's source. The greater the divine demand for the righteousness of good works, right lives, the fuller must be our attainment in Christian Science of that understanding of the divine Love which enables us, as it enabled the Master to say: "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

If too blind or sinful to see or admit our only unselfish need,—the need of love,—or if, through human subterfuges, we try to escape from bearing the "cross," which alone calls for, or brings it, we cannot hope to receive the blessing of divine Love. Do we expect our bank to pay us needed money,—when we have it on deposit in abundance,—without our making proper draft upon it, and giving sufficient proof that the money is ours, establishing, satisfactorily to the banker, our identity? "And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me" (St. Luke, 9:23).

*Science and Health, p. 494.

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