Editorial October 9, 1920 Issue

Love Your Enemies

Frederick Dixon

There is no saying of Christ Jesus which has given more pause to humanity than the command, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Humanity has scarcely attempted to live up to what it has regarded as such a doctrine of perfection. It has, on the whole, put it aside as one of the ultimates of demonstration; one of those things to be achieved some day, some day being any time but the present. Yet in all this humanity has been kicking against the pricks. The teaching of Christ Jesus sums up the unity of good. It is no more possible for the student of divine metaphysics to succeed by avoiding the deeper metaphysical problems than it is for the student of mathematics to become a mathematician by confining himself to the multiplication table.

In reality, however, divine metaphysics are as easy of comprehension as the metaphysics of the schools are difficult. The reason is simple: the one deals with the absolute, the other with the intricacies of negations. Thus Jesus saw quite clearly that, in divine metaphysics, man could have no enemy, since the image and likeness of God, Principle, was incapable of radiating or experiencing enmity; whilst, even in a counterfeit world of material illusion, a man could have no enemy but himself, his own belief in the reality and power of evil. It was then, surely, no excessive counsel of perfection to bid a man to love himself, so as to be enabled to begin the struggle against the belief of evil in his own material consciousness, the presence of which was hourly corroding his perception of harmony. "Even in belief," Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 10 of "Miscellaneous Writings," "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."

It was this, of course, to which Jesus was alluding when, repudiating to the rich ruler any claim to personal goodness, he insisted, "There is none good but one, that is, God." Obviously, if God, Principle, alone is good, there can be but one evil, the suppositional absence of Principle. An enemy, consequently, is never a person, but is always evil, or satan, the adversary of good, for the word satan is not the name of a person, but a Hebrew substantive meaning adversary. In this way the command to love your enemies becomes, in divine metaphysics, no superhuman task but a simple direction to grapple with sin in yourself, as Mrs. Eddy further points out, on page 8 of "Miscellaneous Writings": "Simply count your enemy to be that which defiles, defaces, and dethrones the Christ-image that you should reflect. Whatever purifies, sanctifies, and consecrates human life, is not an enemy, however much we suffer in the process."

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