Article January 28, 1922 Issue

Love Thy Neighbor

ETHEL SANOR COMMERFORD

The good is all that ever really lives, is true, or has power. Every loving thought, every noble deed is immortal, lives throughout eternity; in fact, is true expression of divine Principle. Say, for instance, that error claims to be conscious or to govern man. It does not matter how real it may seem to be, it never is true, has no inherent power, and is never man's individuality. Neither does it matter how long error claims to have been man's consciousness; it never did exist or have real entity. The understanding of this enables one to heal all error, disease, or sin instantaneously. The only way error can claim to have power or existence is by deceiving one into believing that it is man's consciousness, has a history, and has existed for a certain length of time. Since there is just the one perfect, spiritual consciousness existing throughout all eternity, conscious only of the perfection of being, error claiming to be either sickness or sin is never real and cannot even claim to be man's consciousness.

The writer remembers how after her first interview with a Christian Science practitioner this truth so dawned upon her thought that she was instantaneously healed of invalidism that claimed to be inherited. Friends declared that a miracle had been performed, but it was just the natural, spontaneous awakening to an eternal fact, the result of gleaning a slight understanding of man's preexistence as spiritual idea, radiating the perfect qualities of the one Mind, God.

A familiar verse of the ninetieth psalm, "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations," presents the spiritual, conscious truth of being. Man does exist and always has existed in the divine Mind, and can only inherit from this one divine source. On page 300 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy declares: "The temporal and unreal never touch the eternal and real. The mutable and imperfect never touch the immutable and perfect. The inharmonious and self-destructive never touch the harmonious and self-existent." The storm of material sense may seem to rage, but it never has and never can touch or disturb man's real being, existent throughout all time and space as the full, complete manifestation of all that really is. The result of this right reasoning is immediate in its effect. It enables one to discern man's spiritual freedom, eternal harmony, and find all action in Mind.

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