Editorial February 5, 1921 Issue

The Love That Is God

Gustavus S. Paine

Throughout her writings Mrs. Eddy has shown the difference between Love as Principle and so-called love as human emotion or physical feeling. To any one who studies her works together with the Scriptures, it should be clear, therefore, that the spiritual reality and any suppositional counterfeit have nothing in common. One who attempts to write more about what has already been so thoroughly expressed might well have a feeling of temerity, were it not that the subject is indeed infinite and forever unfolding. Thus each one who expresses in any measure a true sense of this unfoldment is fulfilling the service required of him. The expression of the one loving, divine Principle shows itself, of course, in a multitude of ways, terms, and actions. Unfolding service is by no means limited to any set words or forms. Indeed, every word that actually presents the truth is loving, for it inspires and heals by replacing falsity with the goodness of God.

On page 465 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says, "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love." Here is a sentence which every student of Christian Science must ponder over endlessly in order to prove constant progress in his understanding and practice of demonstrable metaphysics. The last word "Love" is the climax of the sentence, so that when one has discerned and realized with all humility what each one of the other words there imparts to him of absolute Deity, then he has little need to puzzle over the formulation of some human definition of divine Love, for he knows that infinite Love is illimitable, humanly indefinable. To define means ordinarily to limit. Hence Mrs. Eddy declares, on page 213 of Science and Health, "God, good, is self-existent and self-expressed, though indefinable as a whole."

It is easy enough to point out something of what divine Love is not, though to complete the process one would have to go through all the categories of supposititious mortal existence. Certainly insipid sentimentality, for instance, that is the concomitant of smugness and self-complacency, is not the quality of God. And yet it is impossible to think of any positively wrong quality without there being the positive right quality of the divine consciousness to replace such a spurious opposite. Hence infinite intelligence finds it ever sufficient to be boundlessly active, without possibility of destruction. This is the vitally loving self-sufficiency of the true I am. The real man, as the expression of this one intelligence, this one I am, rejoices in being the unlimited activity manifesting God.

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