PUTTING ON "THE PANOPLY OF LOVE"

RALPH W. CESSNA

Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 571), "Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you." This is a comforting thought. But it is much more than that. It is the sure protection, when understood, against those troubles which seem to arise from unhappy relations with our fellow man. But one may ask: "What is this 'panoply of Love'? How do I put it on? Does something unloving really exist and operate outside divine Love?"

Christian Science answers that "the panoply of Love" is the consciousness of God's goodness and allness. Being clad in it is understanding that God is infinite and recognizing the fact which follows from this, that there is nothing but Love in the presence of the omnipresent, of whom John said, "God is love." There are then no limits to Love; there is no "outside" to this panoply. There is, in other words, no hatred. Man, the image of God, expresses only that which God expresses, experiences only that which God decrees. And it is important here to see that the true, incorporeal, spiritual identity of each of us can only love and be loved.

The student of Christian Science learns that he need not wait for the other person involved to take the human steps which put an end to any seeming troubles. The student must take those steps himself. One does not point to another and say, "I am sinless; he is to blame."

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