Article April 2, 1921 Issue

Right Living

E. H. HUGHES D'AETH

Right living is right thinking, and right thinking, when we get down to facts, to the bedrock of things, is love, the expression of divine Love, first, last, and all the time, love of God, love of good. We cannot love God, good, supremely and at the same time harbor evil thoughts. The thoughts may come, but our love for good will cause us to turn from them with loathing, knowing that it is only in the harmonious and true that we shall find peace and joy. No man loves evil. He may not love good, or he may think that he does not, but he cannot love evil. He may think that he finds a certain amount of pleasure in it, but he is never satisfied or contented with it; there is always something lacking, a blank that is never filled until his thinking changes and his whole life is filled with the love of good.

We are told not only to love our friends but to love our enemies, and our enemies often turn out to be our best friends, when we have conquered feelings of resentment, anger, hatred, and these inharmonious conditions give way to thoughts of love. Then, rejoicing in our knowledge that we have conquered evil and are reflecting and glorifying God, we bless our enemies, for they have been the unconscious means of giving us the opportunity of proving our love of good. We think that we have a hard task before us when we know that we have to love our enemies, but is it such an easy thing to love our friends, to love them with the real love? We may admire them, take pleasure in their society, prefer them to our enemies, love them with a material love, but do we really love them in the highest sense? How often after spending happy hours with them do we not, while thinking of and admiring their sweetness of disposition, clear thinking, all their good qualities, ponder and wonder over that one little failing which we think we have discovered in them? If we loved them as we ourselves would be loved, would we see that little failing? Would not we see the image and likeness of God as the reality of friends?

Loving good we must hate evil; that is, we must see the utter unreality and nothingness of evil. It is comparatively easy for the student of Christian Science to recognize and be prepared for the approach of sin in its more flagrant forms; it is the little sneaking errors that get in their work almost before one knows they are there, that so often cause one to trip. Such are irritability, jealousy, pride, criticism, judging, condemning, and that most insidious of errors, discouragement. In fighting against this last I do not know anything more helpful than a careful study of the life, as far as we know it, of that lovable, headstrong, impetuous man, the disciple Peter. Always the first to act, the first to speak, impelled, as it were, by his great love for the Master to thrust himself forward, often blundering, often failing, yet we never hear of his being discouraged. Bitterly grieved he must have been very often, but always pressing on. What a dreadful rebuke of sin that must have been from a beloved Master, "Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me." How inclined would a man be, with less of Peter's great love, to let discouragement in, feeling that however good a fisherman he might have been he was no good at his present work and that the best thing he could do would be to go back to his former vocation. But Peter was a fighter and would not turn his back on the enemy. And how Jesus understood and helped him. He fostered the great love that he saw was there and checked the impulsiveness. He seems to have kept Peter always near him, watching over him, encouraging him, and rebuking him when necessary. In the last chapter in Mark we read that when the two Marys and Salome saw the young man in the sepulcher he bade them take the message to "his disciples and Peter."

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