The Healing Power of Love

WARWICK A. TYLER

Of all that Mrs. Eddy has written, probably no sentence is quoted more frequently than the one which appears in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," on page 494, "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." We are taught in Christian Science that God is expressed through man, and that unless the attributes of Deity are apparent we have no evidence of the existence of their divine Principle. Can we, then, expect divine Love to solve our problems and meet our needs if we are neglecting to express the divine qualities?

One familiar with the letter of Christian Science once went to a practitioner for help. After reciting a long tale of woe, with much grumbling about the hardness of her lot and the injustice of it, she quoted the above-mentioned passage, and said, "I should like to know what divine Love has ever done for me; it doesn't meet my needs." Without a moment's hesitation, the practitioner replied, "I should like to know how much divine love you have in your heart; how much sympathy, tenderness, and forgiveness you have there for others." Continuing, the practitioner pointed out that if we want Love to solve our problems, we must fill our hearts with love for our fellows, and learn, through a growing understanding of God, as infinite Love universally expressed, to unsee faults and to realize that the children of God at all times manifest towards each other only kindness and tenderness, justice and mercy; that we are dependent upon God for our very existence; and that as we lift our thought to the contemplation of His unfailing love for us, earnestly and patiently endeavoring to reflect that love and to share it with our fellows, our burdens are lightened and our problems are solved. Needless to say, the one asking for help went away enlightened and comforted.

A heart absorbed in materiality cannot be responsive to divine Love. Spirituality partakes of the very nature and essence of Love. In order to experience the healing influence of this Love, our thoughts must grow spiritual. It is not reasonable, then, to expect spiritual blessings while thought is centered on what is selfish, sensuous, and material. Belief in the existence and reality of material selfhood, with its pains and pleasures, loves and hates, hopes and fears, has brought to mortals every ill to which flesh is heir. The human need is to be freed from this belief and its effects,—sorrow and lack, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death. And this need is met, these effects or errors are overcome, as mortals turn away from matter and evil, and seek to know and to express that tender spiritual love which marks the alighting of the sparrow, feeds the raven, and clothes the lily.

Our omnipotent, infinite Father-Mother God, divine Love, by His very nature comprises within Himself all graciousness, tenderness, kindness, compassion, thoughtfulness, benevolence, and bounty. He is forever providing for all the needs of all His children. But, like the weary wanderer in the desert, who must make the effort to drink of the stream he has found, we ourselves have something to do. How may we partake of the life-giving stream? How may we have access to its divine source? We must approach the great heart of infinite Love through prayer, the prayer of which our beloved Leader has written thus in "No and Yes" (p. 39): "True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection. Prayer is the utilization of the love wherewith He loves us. Prayer begets an awakened desire to be and do good." We have to pray, then; we have to learn to know and to love God, and to let our love be so pure and unselfish that it shall include all mankind.

"Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." Christian Science teaches how we may experience and manifest this Love in our lives; how we may be "kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another." It shows us how we may—nay, how we must—awaken to the realization that man, the image and likeness of infinite Love, is not a creature of material sense and self, lust and hate, fear and woe, sin, sickness, and death, but that, on the contrary, man eternally reflects infinite tenderness and compassion, purity and freedom, confidence and joy, health, happiness, and prosperity. When we, as students of the Christianity which Christ Jesus taught and lived, and of the Science discovered and founded by our revered Leader, begin even dimly to perceive the operation of that divine Love which heals, let us examine ourselves and make sure there exists in our consciousness no unloving thought towards our neighbor, no sense of resentment against person, or circumstance; let us fill our hearts and our lives with such loving forgiveness, compassion, and tenderness that we shall lose sight of our own need in ministering to that of our brother. Then shall we find indeed that "Love is reflected in love" (Science and Health, p. 17); and in the utilization and expression of the qualities of divine Love in our own lives we shall see the fulfilling of the law which meets every human need.

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