Article April 11, 1942 Issue

A Higher Sense of Friendship

MABEL WHITE RODOCKER

True friendship, as revealed through the application of Christian Science to human relationships, is a beautiful experience. Perhaps we might say that it is one of the most sacred experiences which come to the human heart. Certainly, there is no demand more persistent, and compelling more attention, than the desire for a loyal friend with whom one may feel a mutual understanding, a loving sympathy.

The establishment of a true sense of brotherhood among men will bring about universal harmony. So-called friendship which has no element of the divine in it —no trace of Christlike, compassionate love—fails in the test; it is not true friendship. Therefore, when we are forming friendships, the evidence of spiritual sense, rather than the testimony of the material senses, should be relied upon.

Literature has often attempted to cast a certain glamour over the sorrows and disappointments which attend a material sense of love. Selfish human opinion, lust, envy, and jealousy do not promote a rich, abiding love, for they are the tares which would try to choke and destroy the blades of unselfish, impartial love. However, regarding true love, Mary Baker Eddy has written in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 304), "This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object: that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never produce mind nor life result in death." Mortal belief seeks to array one individual against other individuals, even as it arrays nation against nation. Such an error has no place in the consciousness of true being. It falls helpless before the higher sense of love which leads to true unity, intelligence, and concord, and reveals the one Mind, God, instead of minds many, as all-powerful.

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