"A new commandment"

Violet Ker Seymer

Divine Love inspired Jesus' words, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." Because he loved the truth of being, Jesus refused to accept the mental pictures of sick, sinful mortals, or of "the last enemy"—the lie against Life. He loved by steadfastly beholding God and His spiritual image, and this love, reflecting Love, brought forth a harvest of healing. In short, because he loved truly, Christ Jesus never believed a lie against God, man, or the spiritual universe.

To us, too, evil will appear unreal, an obsolete superstition, if we will obediently look out upon creation from the standpoint of infinite Love and its own perfect expression. Is it so hard to love more—to reflect more of the one Love? Is it so hard to think truly—to express more of the one Truth? No, it is the only thing for the student of Christian Science to do, and it is divinely natural, in fact, inevitable. Love is omnipresent, and its fuller expression is always possible. In this fuller reflection of Love, healing is at hand for all. "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous."

As Christian Scientists, we can draw upon Love's varied and infinite resources for inspiration, fidelity, obedience, courage. We can draw on divine Love or Principle for the capacity to forgive and forget; for the spiritual ability to be steadfastly joyous and universally loving. We can regard any attempt at discord as but a challenge to us to render fuller obedience to the command to love spiritual reality, and thereby bring forth its fuller manifestation in our lives.

"There is no fear in love." Do we see that fear constitutes disobedience to the "new commandment"? Is not fear due to the human belief in separation from omnipresent Love and from the life, health, righteousness, and abundance which it bestows impartially upon all? Implied in the "new commandment" is the necessity to cease fearing anything on earth or in heaven, anything in the past, present, or future, anything for ourselves or for those whom we profess to love. Our love will be purer as we see that Truth and Love are inseparable, and that in true knowing there is fearless loving. As we wake to love the spiritual creation and acknowledge its perfect government and everlasting preservation, we shall break the habit of fear and adopt the spirit of confidence. Often in Christian Science the claim of fear is silenced through setting ourselves resolutely to love our true selfhood and that of others, and to acknowledge no other selfhood.

Since there is no reality in fear and nothing to be feared in infinite Love and its manifestation, why should we waste one precious moment in blindly berating ourselves or others for the doubt, unbelief, anxiety of mortal mind? We are freed from these and other errors of thought only through our obedience to divine Principle, which knows them not. Has anyone ever found that brooding over his faults corrected them? If we entertain the mortal mind suggestions of self-pity, self-justification, fear, if we mournfully deplore shortcomings in ourselves and in others, are we not that moment shutting out the spiritual light which alone can blot them out of human consciousness? Instead, shall we not rejoice in expressing more of the harmony and power of divine Love?

Our Leader writes (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 117), "Obedience is the offspring of Love; and Love is the Principle of unity, the basis of all right thinking and acting; it fulfils the law." The love of good is natural to man. As Love's manifestation he knows naught else. Therefore, when tempted to think or feel other than loving, righteous, healthful, and happy, the Christian Scientist has but to refuse to think negatively, despondently, hatefully, fearfully of himself or of others. The aggression of error will yield to his loyal and persistent acknowledgment of Love's everlasting supremacy and its expression in his own thought and life.

Obedience to the "new commandment" means obeying the spirit and the letter of "the scientific statement of being," to be found on page 468 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. This obedience, this true loving, entails clear-cut adherence to the line of demarcation which is unequivocally indicated in this statement between the real and the unreal, the existent and the nonexistent. Healing will be spontaneous, uplifting, strengthening, as we take to ourselves our Leader's comprehensive statement in the Message to The Mother Church for 1902 (pp. 8,9): "Spiritual love makes man conscious that God is his Father, and the consciousness of God as Love gives man power with untold furtherance. Then God becomes to him the All-presence—quenching sin; the All-power—giving life, health, holiness; the All-science—all law and gospel."

Violet Ker Seymer

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Spiritual Discernment

July 31, 1937

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