Article February 21, 1925 Issue

The Quality of Cooperation

HUGH STUART CAMPBELL

IN answer to the question, "What is man?" on page 475 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy answers in part, "He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas." Thus it is seen that man, including all spiritual ideas, embraces the idea of divine cooperation. Understanding the fact, how does a Christian Scientist demonstrate what this spiritual term implies? By expressing in daily activity what he understands cooperation as a divine attribute to be.

As God is the origin of this attribute, and as all of God's creation is "altogether lovely," we know that there is but one right kind of cooperation, namely, loving, intelligent, divine cooperation; the perfect, complete, harmonious, selfless, spiritual union of divine Principle and its idea, man. God's children, including all good, manifest this right idea of union, because it is impossible for spiritual man to do otherwise.

Mere material union is barren of accomplishment. True spiritual union, in which there is strength, is the real, the indissoluble bond between divine Love and its reflection, man. Right motives are evidences of "God with us." They manifest true affiliation. If to succeed in well-doing, to achieve greatness through goodness, is to come into agreement with God, then, to express the very highest sense of cooperation, one's work and aims must be selfless. No Christian Scientist, no alert worker in God's vineyard, can afford to be a selfcentered isolationist. He cannot barricade himself within the armor of selfishness, and be a consistent Christian. Universal love portrays the love of God, and mutual love is the law of concerted right action. Our Leader writes in Science and Health (p. 266), "Universal Love is the divine way in Christian Science."

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