Article June 9, 1923 Issue

"The panoply of Love"

REGINALD HUNT WELSH

From all students of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and, in a greater measure perhaps, from those whose literary tastes have led them over a wide range of literature of all kinds, not only the beauty of the language of this book in which most beautiful ideas are expressed, but the very happy choice of simile and metaphor used throughout it, must evoke appreciation.

In exemplification of the above, on page 571 of Science and Health our beloved Leader introduces a simile which is Greek in origin, when she makes the very comforting as well as strengthening statement, "Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you." The "panoply," it may be noted, was the full armor in which the hoplite, or heavy-armed Greek soldier, was clad. To him it was all-essential, indispensable, in that in it was placed his whole confidence, since thus protected he was impervious to the darts and missiles encountered in ordinary warfare. Thus equipped and emboldened, he advanced against the foe.

In like manner, Christian Scientists are rendered impervious to the darts, the arrows, and the shafts of so-called mortal mind by the great truth that God's ideas are now and always wholly and completely protected by divine Love. Since Love is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, it must irrefutably follow that all and every form of hatred, — the suppositional opposite of Love, — must be ever absent; hence, ever powerless. Moreover, since Love reigns supreme everywhere, with man as its invulnerable expression, there is in this divine armor no opening, no seam, no chink, — as found in the joinings inevitable in the Greek soldier's metal armor,— where a mental shaft of error can possibly penetrate. In short, the Greek's defense was vulnerable, because merely material; the Christian Scientist's is invulnerable, because it is purely spiritual, — real, permanent, and substantial.

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