Editorial September 2, 1922 Issue

Love's Likeness

Ella W. Hoag

Mankind has always longed to understand the meaning of real love. It has longed to express true love and to be loved truly. It has desired in every normal moment to be lovely, loving, lovable; but try as best it might, mankind as a whole has failed to understand how to win these wonderful characteristics. To be sure, occasionally there have been those who seemed to express these qualities in greater or less degree and were proportionately envied by those failing to compass them. In every heart — the heart even of those apparently most favored in this direction — there has, however, still remained the longing for a larger understanding of the way whereby more love could be both given and received. There has still remained the unsatisfied craving for a love which was more abiding, more reliable, more satisfying.

And where was mankind looking for love? To persons, since persons filled the larger part of its vision. It was looking so constantly to persons that it had come to be accepted almost as a truism, that only when persons loved, approved, applauded, appreciated, could there be any satisfaction whatsoever. Indeed, What will they, or this or that one, think or say? had come to be the thought back of nearly every act; and the winning of human approbation was the goal which multitudes had set for themselves. Then when, instead, disapproval was encountered, disappointment, sorrow, and discouragement had followed in its train.

Now the Apostle John says definitely that "God is love." Hence to understand Love one must understand God. We also learn from the Scriptures that "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." It then necessarily follows that man must be the image and likeness of divine Love. This is a conclusion which mankind rarely contemplated until Christian Science was revealed. It is, therefore, only as one learns through Christian Science to demonstrate this truth of being that he can fully know what Love and Love's likeness really are. Then from this standpoint let us consider for a moment what it means to be the likeness of divine Love. It must surely imply that man is, in reality, the expression of all that divine Love is, of that which is beautiful and true, of all that is perfect and divine, of every quality which is truly desirable and adorable. From this it must follow that the opposite of Love, or hate, could never tempt or reach man; that fear would find nothing to fasten itself upon in his consciousness; that no sin, no sickness, no evil, could ever find anything therein to which to attach itself.

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