Article February 23, 1907 Issue

"THOU SHALT LOVE THE LORD THY GOD."

GEORGE R. LOWE

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE gives a most comforting sense of the divine nearness. As we learn that God is Mind, the one infinite consciousness,—omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent,—a sense of secure and intimate relationship with the supreme Being is disclosed to us. No human friend can understand so well our inmost thought of good; nor can we understand our real selves without God, since the one Mind is the sole originator of right thinking. No one else can know so well our aspiration to be good. We cannot confide so deeply in any human being, for all true confidence in a friend must be based on a recognition of Godlike qualities. Only God and God's likeness can be truly trusted or loved. The love and the lovableness are both of God. To love God is, therefore, fundamental. To love God, and to love man, God's idea,—these comprehend the whole meaning, duty, and purpose of being. In Christian Science we learn that God is Love, but divine Love is not of the quality of false, fickle, temporal human affection; nor yet a pantheistic, ethereal subtlety believed to permeate its supposed opposite, matter,—but the infinite consciousness of good, the one Ego, the only person, incorporeal, sublime. God is more than the sum of all good, true, eternal qualities, because these proceed from infinite Mind, and have no being, save as manifestations of Mind, and "the conscious identity of being" (Science and Health, p. 475).

Do we love God? So far as we understand Love, we must love and adore; we must, more naturally than children cling to their parents, cling to divine Love, made known in Christian Science as "our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious" (Science and Health, p. 16). Peter said to Christ Jesus, "Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee." So God's child naturally loves the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and God, the divine Mind, knows the love of His own child, which is simply God's own thought reflected,—His own love, His own creation, manifested in conscious individuality.

Does God hear our sincere avowal of love? Does the all-hearing Mind hear us? Yes, indeed, and that alone does He hear, though it may seem to come through a cry of sorrow. It is the love and not the sorrow that He hears, for there is no sorrow in divine Love. Though the upward look may seem to glance through bitter tears, it is the love-light that He sees, for there is no bitterness in the sweet consciousness of perfect Love. Though it seem to be uttered by a sinful, imperfect, sick, struggling mortal, there is no sin nor sickness in the true confession of love; and the love which is awakened for God is the pure response of Soul's image to God, the only Soul or Love. God is Love; God is All; and His children simply reflect the Love that is Lover and Beloved, and that heals and saves and blesses forever. No sorrow, nor sickness, nor sin, nor want can withstand the pure fervor of divine affection, nor can death itself sever from Soul the individual who loves God.

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