Article July 14, 1917 Issue

Knowing and Loving

RICHARD DEENER

When the writer was led to take up the study of Christian Science, the need of help seemed so urgent and real, the lack of anything practical in all that he had ever before investigated in a religious way seemed so apparent, that once the truth was found he simply lived with the Bible and Science and Health day and night. Every word was as a jewel, every thought as a sunbeam leading like a kindly light to the source of all good. Since then, while still young in the study of Christian Science, by striving to know, to enter into the right understanding, he has had many glorious proofs of the power of Truth.

Our family was driven out of Mexico by the revolution, but in the midst of seeming distress we found the truth. After practising medicine for more than fifteen years, I sold my surgical instruments to buy Mrs. Eddy's works, thus beating my spears into pruning-hooks, as it were. One of the first lessons learned in Christian Science was the necessity of understanding love as a foundation in building our house of Truth, the realization that "Love alone can impart the limitless idea of infinite Mind," as Mrs. Eddy tells us on page 510 of Science and Health. I had no enemies except evil and its brood, there was no one in all the world that I hated; but on the other hand, there was no one outside my own family that I loved except in a very passive kind of way, and it did not seem to me that I really loved any one as Christ Jesus commanded us to love. What did it mean to love, anyway? How was one to know how to love? What was it to love every creature that God had made in the way God would have us love? These questions were in my thought all the time as I sought to know the truth about love in order to be obedient to Truth.

While going down the street toward the outskirts of the town one day in this state of yearning, I prayed with earnest desire that divine Love would show me what love is,—how to love my fellow man, and how to know that I really did love him. Glancing across the street I saw an elderly lady, seemingly walking with great difficulty. The burden of false beliefs was resting unlovingly upon her, and "hard times" seemed written in material evidence all over the bent form. The thought came that if she only knew the truth about God and herself, as it is revealed through Christian Science, if she only knew what it means to be God's child, and that this child is never bent or sorrowful or suffering or lacking any good thing, how happy she would be.

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