Editorial November 18, 1944 Issue

"A truer sense of Love"

Margaret Morrison

One of the dearest names for God is Love. The ultimate goal then of the Christian Scientist is to understand and reflect the glowing beauty and the power of that Love which makes of one Mind all the nations that dwell upon the face of the earth; that ends wars and reveals the omnipresence and omnipotence of its own universal harmony.

Perhaps in all language no word has come to be so misused, so misunderstood, or so grossly perverted as the word "love." Too frequently it is given the exact opposite of its true meaning. Through an understanding of Christian Science we come to know Love in its pristine purity, beauty, and might. We learn that Love is not a thing of the senses, but divine Principle, not personal but universal, selfless, changeless, expressed in immutable law. Love is always intelligent, never mesmeric.

On page 19 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy says: "Jesus aided in reconciling man to God by giving man a truer sense of Love, the divine Principle of Jesus' teachings, and this truer sense of Love redeems man from the law of matter, sin, and death by the law of Spirit,—the law of divine Love." Important questions then are: What is this "truer sense of Love"? How does it differ from the personal sense of love, sometimes so self-sacrificing in its efforts to aid and yet so unavailing to save? We find an answer to these queries in a letter of St. John where he says, "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear." Here is the great difference—"there is no fear in love." The human sense of love sees man as material, believes him capable of sinning, suffering, dying, and so is filled with fear for the one loved. The greater the love the greater the fear. Divine Love, which knows man as spiritual, "casteth out fear"—fear caused by the belief that life is in and dependent on what is called matter.

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