Article December 28, 1935 Issue

"The living beauty of Love"

NELLIE B. MACE

The truth that "God is love," as the beloved disciple declares, is generally accepted. Yet the reflecting of Love in daily living calls for a clarity of spiritual thinking which many admit they have not seemed able consistently to maintain; for love is, as it has been said, an "emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end." Throughout the centuries the truth that God is Love has been gradually impressing itself upon human consciousness, and the power of divine Love's penetration has been manifested in the persistent, if at times interrupted, progress of humankind toward a clearer appreciation of this ideal. The holy nature of God and His love for His creation are variously revealed in the Bible, Jeremiah, for example, voicing the assurance of God's love to His children in the words, "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee."

Christ Jesus, being familiar with the Scriptures, in his matchless living exemplified the healing truth that God—omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience—is Love. Because of his spiritual nature he was constantly and increasingly aware of God as ever-present Love; but it was not enough—it was not possible—for him to dwell alone in the bliss of this realization. His needs must manifest his worship of God in loving mankind, and thus proving the power of divine Love to deliver men from the false sense of life apart from God. Therefore, he gave to his followers the ideal of true discipleship: "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." And his true followers have known that the test of faith and love lies in following his direction to Peter, "Feed my lambs, ... my sheep."

Christ Jesus' knowledge of divine Love and its illimitable power enabled him to hold inviolate in his pure consciousness the spiriutal ideal, and at the same time to manifest Love in delivering others from the mesmerism of mortal beliefs of sin and suffering. Mrs. Eddy's perception of what Jesus' life and works proved of the power of divine Love enabled her to elucidate the truth of being in her writings and to practice it, showing others how they too in individual demonstration can prove the presence and the power of Love. What the prophets had foreseen, what Jesus had revealed and manifested, she introduced into present experience through the revelation of divine Science. Her work has shown us that we must understand the nature and power of God, as divine Love, and that we must see the spiritual selfhood of ourselves and of everyone as included in the perfect man, the complete idea or reflection of Love. Only by receiving love into our consciousness, by understanding the spiritual idea which expresses Love, can we truly understand God and live so as to prove that we know Him, that we love divine Principle enough to desire and strive to forgive wrongs, help to forestall them by seeing evil as unreal, and willingly labor toward the harmonization of situations and conditions which call for the expelling of dishonesties, thefts, deceits, hates, and other wrongs.

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