Article September 16, 1911 Issue

THE HABIT OF HATING

HON. CLARENCE A. BUSKIRK.

THE world contains many people who cherish, as did the writer at one time, the foolish and pestiferous notion that to be "a good hater" is evidence of strength of character. Sometimes, even, the absurd notion is held that the ability to hate well shows a corresponding temperamental disposition and power to love well. Literature abounds with mischievous encouragement of such notions. Incorrect opinions about God being "a hater," opinions which are derived through a superficial consideration of the meaning of some passages in the Bible, are appealed to for supporting the falsity of such notions. Great writers like Thomas Carlyle have adulterated their mighty influences for good with the false teaching that hate has shown itself at times in the affairs of the world, as in the French Revolution, for example, to be a sublime dynamic energy to assist humankind toward bettered conditions.

One of the blessings incident to the careful study of the writings of Mrs. Eddy, who was a very safe and profound reasoner (as is shown whenever we apply the ultimate tests of logic, although the hasty glance at some of her statements might lead to the opposite opinion), is to be found in the fact that such study has been educating us how to think more broadly, more surely, more exactly. We learn—many of us, at least—how to analyze and synthesize more successfully. Besides, when we come to any of those highways or byways in our meditations where heretofore we always found ourselves to be painfully stumbling along in the dark, our progress is assisted and illumined if we will turn on the search-lights of the great primary truths of Christian Science.

Let us now try to turn on one of these search-lights, to dispel the misleading falsehood that to hate is sometimes good. Let us begin with the obvious truth that the meaning of the verb to hate is the exact antipode of the meaning of the verb to love. Of course the term love is here used according to its higher meaning only. Love is the creative impulse and motive to be discerned throughout God's universe. Harmony is the incident of love. Nothing could endure without harmony. On the other hand, discord, the antipode of harmony, is always destructive. Love and harmony therefore are based on God's law, they are affirmative elements of the divine Principle of being. Hatred and discord are not such affirmative elements. They are negations of love and harmony; hatred the absence of love, and discord the absence of harmony; therefore, hatred has no law to energize and maintain it.

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