Article September 8, 1934 Issue

"The household of faith"

ZILPHA A. STACK

Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 25), "The divinity of the Christ was made manifest in the humanity of Jesus." This is the basic concept of benevolence—Love loving its ideas. True benevolence is always divine in character, although it appears humanly. It is "the divinity of the Christ ... made manifest," the divine Mind's appearing to humanity. This appearing is as natural as it is inevitable, because the true demonstration of benevolence takes place in the realm of thought and is natural. As we read in Science and Health (p. 119), "God is natural good, and is represented only by the idea of goodness."

What could be more benevolent than to love one's neighbor as one's self, to be unfaltering in tenderness, patience, and unselfish care, and to give hospitality to the divine facts of being?

A dictionary defines the word "benevolence" in part as the "disposition to do good." If we separate all error from our thought of man; if instead of seeing him as a sick, sinning mortal we see him as perfect, is not that being truly benevolent? And as we gain this higher sense of its meaning, are we not lifting our vision and dematerializing our concept of benevolence?

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