Article July 16, 1910 Issue

"WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?"

R. E. HEARD.

One of the greatest blessings that Christian Science has brought to the world is the spiritual understanding which enables us to get away from the material sense of things and find the spiritual sense. The great help which I have experienced while endeavoring to put into effect our Leader's admonitions in this respect, prompts me to give out a thought or two on the lawyer's question, "Who is my neighbor?" The Master gave him a clear and definite explanation as to what constituted his neighbor, and perhaps this explanation was as much as that age could accept, for we must remember that Jesus said, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now."

In this age Christian Science is teaching us that whatever tends to obscure our spiritual sense of God and His universe is the false material sense of this being, and the denial of the seeming reality of this false sense of God, and man is what Jesus required as one of the chief qualifications for discipleship. Webster defines "neighbor" as that which is near, adjoining, next; and Christian Science, in revealing God to us as the Principle of the universe, reveals also the true man. This necessarily destroys the false sense of the material universe and material man, and as the reality of the spiritual man, the image and likeness of God, is revealed to our consciousness, we find that our neighbor has always been near, though "'hid with Christ in God,'—with Truth in divine Love, where human sense hath not seen man" (Science and Health, p. 325); and this manifestation of the spiritual idea or neighbor we can love as our real self. As the psalmist says, "When I awake [from the false sense of life and sensation in matter], I am still with thee."

To the old thought this reasoning may perhaps seem cold or selfish, but it is not. Speaking for myself, if some few years ago I had loved my neighbor as I loved myself, and had done unto my neighbor as I would have been done by myself. I should have been doing him an incalculable amount of harm. When, however, we have cast out the beam from our own eye, we can go to him whom the world calls our neighbor and help him to realize what man really is, and to love and honor his true self as he should, and so cast the mote out of his eye. Our Leader tells us that "to love one's neighbor as one's self is a divine idea; but this idea can never be seen, felt, nor understood through the physical senses" (Science and Health, p. 88); and on page 118 of "Miscellaneous Writings" she says, "Be of good cheer; the warfare with one's self is grand; it gives one plenty of employment, and the divine Principle worketh with you,—and obedience crowns persistent effort with everlasting victory."

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