Article May 25, 1918 Issue

"Love thy neighbor as thyself"

JOHN ASHCROFT

In these days when resentment and hatred are much in evidence, obedience to the Master's great correlative to the First Commandment seems to require more attention than ever before; and there has been revealed, and is being disseminated in Christian Science, as if in anticipation of this hour of need, a scientific and demonstrable understanding of love which makes such obedience entirely possible. In her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 Mrs. Eddy says that "Love expresses the nature of God" (p. 3). St. John declared that "perfect love casteth out fear." Infinite, divine intelligence would necessarily know nothing that could inspire fear; even the suggestion that there might be something to fear would be absent from such consciousness.

The apostle also said, "Let us love one another." Let us reflect infinite, divine intelligence; let us know the truth about each other; let us know as God knows. Let us not be misled by appearances, tricked into believing that we are other than what God knows His children to be, deceived into accepting as the truth of being that which is imperfect or offensive to us in ourselves or in others. If we see man as God's spiritual idea, we cannot fail to love and be loved.

True love is not a mere sentiment, not a passing emotion; it is the clear-sighted spiritual perception of things as they really are. How many of us, when we have failed to heal, have felt that we have not realized our Leader's ideal; that we have not reached our patient "through divine Love" (Science and Health, p. 365), the nature of which we have not fully comprehended. How much better our possibilities for work would be if we remembered that what we are called upon to do is to demonstrate sufficient truth to realize that in God's universe there is nothing to heal or to be healed,—that nothing can ever mar God's creation.

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