Editorial August 4, 1928 Issue

Friends and Enemies

Ella W. Hoag

Cicero once declared, "Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed." Because men of a class have given more thought to the winning of friends than to the losing of enemies, one of the deepest of earth's lessons has been passed by all too lightly. The belief that only good could accrue from friends and only evil from enemies has betrayed men into thinking that friends should be loved, while enemies might with justice be hated.

Mrs. Eddy, in speaking of the wrongs which she had "long endured at the hands of others" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 13), declares they "have most happily wrought out for me the law of loving mine enemies. This law I now urge upon the solemn consideration of all Christian Scientists." And then she quotes Jesus' words, "If ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them."

While Jesus had much to say of both friends and enemies, and although he lived that universal love which enabled him to demonstrate the beauty of true friendship and to rise above and prove powerless all sense of enmity, it remained for Christian Science, with its revelation of the allness of good and the nothingness of evil, to declare to the world that enemies may sometimes be friends.

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