Article April 11, 1931 Issue

Love That Is Felt

GRACE MC KEE BRIGGS

In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy makes the significant statement (p. 312), "People go into ecstasies over the sense of a corporeal Jehovah, though with scarcely a spark of love in their hearts."

A Christian Scientist once realized the practical meaning of this statement when she found herself accepting without any apparent reason a darkened and depressed state of thought. When she began to inquire into her thinking for a cause of this unhappiness, the question presented itself, How much do you really love God? And simultaneously with the question came the answer in the words of the apostle, "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"

Pondering these words and quickly deciding that the measure of our love for God is in proportion to our love for our fellow man, this student examined her thinking and discovered therein a real sense of love and kindliness for her friends and neighbors, but she was sure that her busy life could not afford the time for frequent visits to their homes in order to evidence this love for them through an interest in their affairs. Then came the joyous realization that an audible expression of love was not always necessary; for when a truly tender liking for our neighbors is felt, and an unselfed love exists in our thought, this love must find its expression in Love's own way.

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