Article March 28, 1903 Issue

Learning to Love

ELLA LANCE WILLIS

IN Christian Science Mind and Love are synonymously used to express the highest sense of Deity, hence the activity of Love must be identical with the activity of Mind. To love, therefore, is the art of forever possessing in consciousness the ideal of God's creating, and it can be mastered by mankind, only by right thinking.

Jesus said, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," and Christian Science teaches that to love a brother is to be helpful to him; but the questions arise, How can I love the neighbor who is a drunkard, or, may be, worse, and who awakens within me a sense of repugnance and disgust? and how will loving him help him? To love a neighbor is not to admit this repulsive picture to consciousness with an effort to make one's self believe it is not repugnant, but to turn away from the picture, refusing to listen to what material sense has to say, while thought is opened to receive and reflect the impartation of Spirit regarding the true man; it is to think rightly about the neighbor, to think of him as God thinks him. The material picture is loathsome and remains so. It will never be erased while man's thinking is based on material testimony, for so long will he have an untrue consciousness which is but a channel for mortal mind to reach one who is already disabled.

So, if in the struggle with error, a comrade is wounded by a sin-poisoned arrow, is found guilty of a moral offence, Christian Scientists should be tenderly human, and more. At such a moment a brother especially needs the help which can be rendered only through love. The arrow should be removed by a sympathetic hand, the mesmerism antidoted by truth, and the brother nursed back to the health of holiness through the watchful tenderness of a truly loving heart.

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