Editorial July 12, 1913 Issue

"UNIVERSAL LOVE."

Annie M. Knott

In the chapter on Creation, in Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy tells us how spirituality is to be gained, and after uncovering the false concepts of God and man which have so long been prevalent to mortal sense, she says that we must learn what it means to live "without personal friends," this statement leading up to the conclusion, "Universal Love is the divine way in Christian Science" (p. 266). This teaching is very startling to the human mind, and mortals are inclined to say in the words of the psalmist, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it." The finite sense would fain cling to a personal sense of God, man, and the universe, of friendship, joy, and affection, but on the page of our text-book already quoted we find this assurance: "Spiritual Love will force you to accept what best promotes your growth," this being followed by the counsel to "follow Jesus' sayings and his demonstrations, which dominate the flesh."

It can hardly be denied that all true happiness springs from the consciousness of love and its manifestation. On the other hand, it is no less true to mortal sense, that the very depths of suffering are sounded through the affections. Ask the parent who has lost a child what woe can compare with this sorrow, which calls to mind David's cry over the loss of his erring son, "Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son"! It is possible that some students of Christian Science would say that this grief was wrong, that it sprang from a personal and material sense; which is too true, but since the lesson is so vital to each of us, let us never think that the depth and intensity of the affection were at fault, but that the mistake lay in a finite sense of love, which holds the object of its affection as existing in matter rather than in Spirit, God.

Because of this blindness to spiritual reality, the mother suffers untold and needless anguish as she bends over the cradle of her child, her fear stronger than her love, as a result of the belief that the child is governed by material law, and that it is subject to sin, sickness, and death, while God is too far away to care for it, and yet ages ago Jeremiah declared that the tender mother might forget, but God never! What divine Love can do for every child was exemplified by Christ Jesus, who gave back to the widow of Nain her only son, and awaked Jairus' daughter from the dream of death, and this same Love, understood through Christian Science, casts out fear and destroys hate, as we read in the first epistle of St. John.

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