Article November 8, 1947 Issue

HEALING OF LONELINESS

HELEN POTTERF

In order rightly to adjust human thinking when grief or loneliness seems to prevail, it is necessary so to enlarge our concept of divine Love that we begin to see Love as all-inclusive, not as exclusive. When we confine our love to our family or those whom we call our friends, we are exclusive. We are saying of love, "Lo here!" or, "Lo there!" whereas in reality universal Love is everywhere. So doing, we limit our sense of companionship and joyous living.

We must humble that clamoring belief of mortal selfhood which demands only some particular human presence and open our thought to Love's ever-presence and its good will for all. Such an inclusive sense of love was demonstrated by Jesus. Only the profoundest sense of love could have inspired his utter self-sacrifice. One of the highest evidences of his desire to turn the thought of his followers away from the exclusive sense of personal love is to be found at the very end of his earthly career, when, looking down from the cross on his sorrowing mother and John, he said to them (John 19:26, 27), "Behold thy son!" and, "Behold thy mother!" It is further related that "from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home." Thus the Way-shower demonstrated that we can turn from exclusive preoccupation concerning one person to an inclusive love that finds Love's manifestation and comfort always at hand.

In a most illuminating fashion Mary Baker Eddy writes of this in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 304): "It is ignorance and false belief, based on a material sense of things, which hide spiritual beauty and goodness. Understanding this, Paul said: 'Neither death, nor life, ... nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.' This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object."

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