Article May 1, 1915 Issue

In the first chapter of Genesis we learn that man is the...

S. T. Downs

The Kokomo (Ind.) Dispatch

In the first chapter of Genesis we learn that man is the image and likeness of God; and Christian Science gives the understanding of God as divine Love, Mind, and that "all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all" (Science and Health, p. 468). It will be seen from this that because Love is All-in-all, human hatred cannot be a part of God's creation, and man, in the likeness of his Maker, can neither give out nor attract anything but love.

If God did not create hate, envy, jealousy, or any unloveliness, where did it come from? some may ask. To this question Christian Science gives the positive assurance that such is but the suppositional opposite of God, divine Love. It is mortal mind, "the carnal mind" with its deeds, as St. Paul calls it; it is that which Jesus called "a liar, and the father of it;" and Christian Science uncovers its nothingness and destroys every belief about it and its supposed power through the law of Truth, the law of God. Christian Science shows that hate and its accompaniments have no more power than we give them, that mortals bestow upon them all the power they have. Mrs. Eddy made this very clear in an article entitled "Love Your Enemies," in which she said, "Even in belief you have but one (that, not in reality), and this one enemy is yourself—your erroneous belief that you have enemies; that evil is real; that aught but good exists in Science" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 10).

Divine Love is All-in-all, and man, reality, expresses His qualities. Divine power can neither know about nor coalesce with anything that is human, because the human must give way to the divine; all hate, envy, jealousy,—all evil,—must yield to the law of divine Love. As we prove this fact in our daily lives by constantly watching for and walking with God in an endeavor to be more like Him, we find these positive qualities of divine Love. surely governing, guiding, and directing all our affairs, step by step. Through this understanding we learn the truth of the Christian Science teaching that "clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you." (Science and Health, p. 571), and we learn further that this means it cannot reach us by being manifested toward others from within, nor can it influence us or our affairs from without. Thus we learn how to obey the first commandment, and the two like it that Jesus gave, by ceasing to make gods, through wrong thinking, of a belief in the reality and power of the opposite of divine Love, and by loving our brother as the expression of Love that is infinite Principle; by filling our consciousness with the knowledge and understanding of the reality and power of the one supreme, infinite God.

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