Article July 12, 1924 Issue

A New Sense of Love

ZOE H. CLARKE

Christian Science gives us a new understanding of love. The thought of love common to most people is a merely personal sense of love of family, love of friends, love of those who love us, almost to the exclusion of love for any other. But the Bible says, "Love your enemies, ... for if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?" And on page 312 of "Miscellaneous Writings" our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, says, "Love is consistent, uniform, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, unutterably kind." Each characteristic here stated lifts love far above the merely human sense of it, and makes it far more than love of personality.

A mother's love for her child in many respects fulfills the requirements of true loving. On page 60 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, we read, "A mother's affection cannot be weaned from her child, because the mother-love includes purity and constancy, both of which are immortal." But what we call love for one's friends may fluctuate, may vary. To-day we are tender and considerate, to-morrow we may be cold and haughty, perhaps because of some slight difference of opinion, or some variance of taste. Years pass, views alter, new aims and ambitions take the place of the old; and our one-time friends become strangers to us. Such love is neither uniform nor consistent.

Sympathetic! How much of the human sense of love is really sympathetic? Is it not apt to be tinged with a feeling of superiority, a self-righteousness that thanks God it is not "as other men"?

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