Article August 17, 1929 ISSUE

"The price of learning love"

ELIZABETH HAYWARD GARDNER

Between the personal attribute called love and the Love which the beloved disciple assures us is God, there is a gulf as impassable as that which yawned between Dives and Lazarus. Nothing could be more unlike the exacting despotism of physical attraction than the all-embracing protection of divine Love. That which commonly poses for love in everyday human living cannot be love, for it springs from the belief of the attraction of personal qualities, and thus claims to make good resident in matter. Since the five material senses are incapable of cognizing aught outside their own realm, it is plain that whatever they testify to is sensuous or material, and therefore is not of God. "Wherefore," as Mrs. Eddy says of sensuous love in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 351), "it is hate instead of Love; for the five senses give to mortals pain, sickness, sin, and death,—pleasure that is false, life that leads unto death, joy that becomes sorrow. Love that is not the procurator of happiness, declares itself the antipode of Love; and Love divine punishes the joys of this false sense of love, chastens its affection, purifies it, and turns it into the opposite channels."

On page 108 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy makes the statement that "immortal cravings, 'the price of learning love,' establish the truism that the only sufferer is mortal mind, for the divine Mind cannot suffer." When, therefore, a harvest of unhappiness is gathered, let it be a warning to the sufferer that "the price of learning love" has not yet been paid.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

The Real Christian Scientist