Article March 18, 1916 Issue

"Wait, and love more"

MAUDE M. GREENE

When that beautiful hymn "Mother's Evening Prayer" (Poems, p. 4) was given us by Mrs. Eddy, there was one Christian Scientist who, while welcoming and loving it, found within herself an unexpected but well defined rebellion against making the third stanza her own prayer. There was an inarticulate cry of protest against a prayer that asked to be made to "wait, and love more for every hate." The waiting had seemed long and hard enough already, the scalding tears and "hope deferred" promised a rather vivid and extended experience. Why must she pray for willingness to wait, to love more! But the words "Wait, and love more," kept persistently saying themselves over and over to her, until they seemed a personal command. The realization soon followed that if she must still wait, and not only continue to love, but love more, she would be forced to find a higher and better understanding of love, a sense which would exceed and transcend any human personal sense of love.

In order to understand the apostle's declaration that "God is love," the word love must be separated from its human entanglements, and it must be understood that the statement is not a thing of emotion or sentiment, but is a scientific necessity. The "great First Cause" is God. In order to be first it must be primary, underived, must be that which exists of itself and continues itself; must be that which can involve within itself no element of oppositeness, else it could be neither self-existing nor self-continuing. This Life without a possible opposite is divine Love. If there is cause, there is effect; one cannot exist without the other.

Mrs. Eddy tells us that man is "the full representation of Mind" (Science and Health, p. 591). He must therefore forever express Life without a possible opposite; he must forever be conscious of Love. That sense of existence which can know its opposite, cannot be life; that sense of love which can recognize its opposite, cannot be love. The omnipresence of Life and Love is also a scientific necessity. The one great cause must be infinite and all-inclusive in order to be first. Life and Love cannot be omnipresent as abstractions; the concrete activities of Love and Life must be everywhere manifesting themselves.

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