Editorial February 25, 1922 Issue

Love

Ella W. Hoag

In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 249) Mrs. Eddy, our beloved Leader, in writing of "Love" says: "What a word! I am in awe before it. Over what worlds on worlds it hath range and is sovereign! the underived, the incomparable, the infinite All of good, the alone God, is Love." Where such as she stands in awe, it would almost seem as though lesser mortals would hesitate even to approach. And yet how every heart is reaching out to understand Love! How all are really longing to come into its wonderful secret and receive its longed-for blessing!

When Christian Science first touches our lives this understanding appears to be fairly within our grasp, and we begin to talk of it as though its fullness were already attained. Then the test comes! An opportunity to heal instantaneously some inveterate disease is presented. But alas! the healing does not always result. Then we begin to see something of what Mrs. Eddy meant when she said (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 312), "Oh, may the love that is talked, be felt! and so lived, that when weighed in the scale of God we be not found wanting."

At this point in our spiritual progress, unless we are on guard, we shall not only be tempted to swing to the other extreme and declare vehemently that we will do no more talking on so infinite a theme, but we shall also be apt to condemn any one who even mentions the name, Love. To be sure, talking without living would always be worse than useless, but our difficulty is that in our zeal without knowledge we have been betrayed into taking the end for the beginning. We have reached for the ultimate and have failed to see the first steps just before us. Never for a moment can we wisely separate ourselves from our search for the understanding of the love which reflects divine Love, God; this, however, can only be found by the humility which sees that real love can never be learned except through the simplest of life's lessons. Half our difficulties dissolve when we accept the fact that the least expression of loving-kindness has in it more of Truth than all the high sounding words which were ever put together.

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