Article December 8, 1923 Issue

"Love your enemies"

CATHERINE KENDALL

It has been well said that the daily reading and practice of the Sermon on the Mount would greatly hasten the coming of the millennium. Though many still aver its practice to be a present-day impossibility, and that it would involve business failure, Christian Science is showing those ready to sacrifice selfishness that it can be done, and that it does not end in failure. The Sermon on the Mount is a wonderful amplification of the Ten Commandments; and the "Thou-shalt-nots" are softened and extended by it into affirmatives, whose observance leads to all the amenities of Christian brotherhood. In the Manual of The Mother Church our revered Leader has referred to this sermon, especially in Article XX, Section 3, where she places a part of it as the basis of Sunday school teaching, part of the foundation work of the church; and in fact the spirit of this sacred sermon breathes throughout the whole of the Church Manual, as also through our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and indeed through every expression of Christian Science.

One of the pet aversions of the ordinary superficial objector to the practicality of this sermon is the command, "Love your enemies." "It is impractical," says the worldly-wise one. "It is too much to expect," says pride. "Impossible," cries self-love. Even the average professing Christian would say, perhaps, "I can tolerate my enemy; I can endure him; but when it comes to loving him, well,—it can't be done!" This last stand appears legitimate according to the ordinary standard of thinking; but Christian Science throws a great light on the subject, showing us there is much work to be done in secret—the work of putting off the old man and putting on the new, as Paul stated it. Then, when this has to some extent been accomplished, the remainder is easier. It is necessary to look through or to unsee the material counterfeit—the old man. The perfect man—the new man—is revealed in Christian Science; and this leads to the realization of the brotherhood of man as resulting from the fatherhood of God.

Seeing there is but one Father-Mother God, who is divine Love, it necessarily follows that all God's children—ideas—must love one another; for they cannot help reflecting Love. There is no strain or struggle necessary: it is divinely natural. Any misdeeds or unkindnesses experienced among mortals have nothing to do with the real man. They are only the seeming incidents of a dream-narrative, which is forgotten when the awakening comes. Certainly the knowing of this, and action in accordance, will hasten the reign of Spirit. Summed up, the ultimate is—to refer in part to the wonderful answer of our Leader, in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 475), to the question,"What is man?" —"Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick" (pp. 476, 477). That this scientific view is practical and workable is abundantly proved by those who honestly and unselfishly apply it. Jesus, our Way-shower, proved it whenever he found opportunity in his great life-work. Mrs. Eddy proved it, as evidenced by her daily prayer, given in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 220), "God bless my enemies; make them Thy friends; give them to know the joy and the peace of love." Her followers, the world over, are proving that this right thinking brings right results.

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