Editorial September 14, 1929 Issue

"The bond of perfectness"

Albert F. Gilmore

Paul's letters contain many exhortations to the early Christians to rise above material sense into the spiritual consciousness of Life and existence. Continually he urged upon the early adherents to Christianity the paramount necessity to spiritualize thought in order to partake of the measureless bounty which God had bestowed upon His beloved. In a letter to the Christians in Colosse he admonishes the members of the church to put off the old materialistic ways of thought, "the old man," and to "put on the new." Having enumerated many Christian virtues to be emulated, he summarizes his plea in these words: "And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness."

Practically all modern translators render ayamn as "love"; and this word is used not in its common meaning of human affection, but in the sense of the "well-known" love which becomes Christians; that is, the love which has been spiritualized, and accordingly has been lifted above the plane of mere human affection to the love of God—a pure, spiritualized, holy love, free from every taint of materiality. So, also, in Paul's letter to the Corinthians the Greek word ayamn, in the King James Version translated "charity," has the deeper significance of Christianly love, a meaning which greatly broadens and enriches the significance of the sentence in which it occurs.

Paul's description of love that is Christianly as "the bond of perfectness" has a deep significance. Does it not imply the paramount necessity on the part of all who, naming the name of Christ, undertake to become true followers, to rise above selfishness, above self-love, to the broader sense of purified love which encompases all mankind? How significant in this connection are Mrs. Eddy's words in the precious prayer which she has provided for our daily use (Church Manual, p. 41): "And may Thy Word enrich the affections of all mankind, and govern them!" Does not this prayer signify an earnest desire to purify affection; to lift it through purification into the realm of spiritual experience, which knows only purity? Our Leader has told us in glowing words that "the corner-stone of all spiritual building is purity" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 241). Therefore, progress Spiritward in made only as the old material beliefs are abandoned, as spiritual truth transforms consciousness.

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