Article December 14, 1907 Issue

WHY WE LOVE

LOUISE SMITH-GLANVILLE.

The dominant chord in the symphony of Christian Science is love. This determines life's sweetest harmonies and is the principal factor in the grand procession which leads to the ultimate or complete understanding of divine Principle, Love. Jesus was ever teaching through precept and example the necessity and joy of loving. When asked by one representing the dead letter of religion, "Which is the great commandment in the law?" he answered, in words which, had they fallen upon a receptive heart, open to their spiritual import, would have quickened it into newness of life, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

Jesus well knew that this command included all others, that had mortals responded to the divine requirements of Love, the Ten Commandments given through Moses would not have been necessary. The law of Love holds us in perfect relationship to God and to our brother, but human thought needs to be educated to this point of discernment. Jesus submitted to the cross that he might show to the world the infinite possibilities of man when conscious of his unity with Love, but even his subline example failed to impress humanity at once with the practical meaning of his message. In Christian Science, the reappearing of the Christ,—the impersonal Saviour,—the command to love is insistently repeated, and we are given specific reasons for loving. We are taught to love, not merely because the Bible tells us to, but because it is a primal requisite in acquiring that understanding of God which lifts us out of earthly woe into the kingdom of peace and blessedness. We must love in order to comprehend, even in the smallest degree, divine Love, the healing, saving Principle.

To love when one has been deeply wronged may seem humanly impossible, but it is divinely possible. Christian Science shows us unmistakably that hatred has no existence in the divine Mind, which the true man reflects, therefore hatred is without truth or reality. It is but evil suggestion, which we may harbor until it produces such a brood of evils that suffering finally forces us to expel it. When it first comes to our door we should look straight through its mask of illusion, and know that it never could exist in the mentality of Truth's child, and should never gain entrance to our thought. Then, when the mist of false sense has cleared away, we shall find ourselves in the glad sunshine of Love's reality, enjoying the sweet harmony of mind and body which Love alone can give. We have no excuse for hating, for in Christian Science we are taught explicitly how to expel hatred and all other error scientifically, to make room for the inflowing tide of divine Love.

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