Article December 2, 1911 Issue

LOVE'S REQUITAL

MYRTLE B. S. JACKSON.

THE divine law of loving one's enemies seems a very high altitude of Christian thinking to attain. Perhaps the chief difficulty in this line of achievement lies in the suggestion that we have not yet learned how to love our friends, and until we do know just how to do it, it is hardly to be expected that we shall make much headway in making friends of our enemies.

The Scriptures say, "If ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them." We leap over this verse in our eager, breathless haste to reach the command, "Love ye your enemies," which follows after, but we might meditate in more wasteful ways than to give a few minutes' sober thinking to the question, Do we always love those who love us? Do we always understand, sympathize with, and return the affection of those who for varying reasons care for us? There is no reason why we should not always do so, and yet the suffering caused by heartbreak and unrequited affection is so prevalent a belief among men that a mental attitude of courteous indifference toward our fellow beings has come to be regarded as the only sensible state of feeling. The fact is that mortals regard human affection in too personal a light altogether, and so become either inordinately proud of it, or else they fly to an even worse extreme, and are desperately afraid of it—afraid of love, which, when rightly understood, is beautiful, blessed, our native atmosphere and vital breath.

Our text-book tells us that "God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle" (Science and Health, p. 275); and that which is Principle must necessarily partake of the nature of law, attraction, adhesion, continuity, strength, righteousness, peace. Man, the image and likeness of divine Principle, Love, must therefore express and radiate love, give it forth and receive it, and abide in the consciousness of it forever and forever. Can we repress, or reject, or fear that which is the essential of the Science of being? Would it be wise or good for us to do so, would it be possible? "Ah, yes," some reader exclaims at this point; "but then, human love as we know it is tainted with material concepts, while divine Love is pure Spirit, and its reflection is purely spiritual and impartial and looks to God alone." Yes, but still it is sweet to remember that our human love is no more material than think it to be, and in this connection it is worth while to ponder more deeply than before the incident of the alabaster box of ointment as recorded in the twenty-sixth chapter of Matthew.

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