Article September 24, 1949 Issue

"WE CANNOT AFFORD TO HAVE ENEMIES"

LOUISE M. BRATT

"We cannot afford to have enemies." This declaration was made during the testimony period at a Wednesday evening meeting held in a Church of Christ, Scientist. The speaker then related the following experience: He and his wife had purchased a house which satisfactorily met the needs of their family. But after they were established in their new home, they were informed that the former owners had been unable to maintain harmonious relations with a next-door neighbor who was a very disagreeable individual and a chronic faultfinder.

At first they were dismayed. But being students of Christian Science, they recognized that here was another problem to be worked out in accordance with the spiritual truths they had learned. They reasoned that it was God's goodness which had provided their much-needed home, and that His goodness blesses all, because Mind, intelligence, governs every activity of man. Because they knew that God is Love and that man is created in His, Love's, own image, they refused to accept the physical sense testimony of a disagreeable person. Instead, they took the position that in the universe of Spirit the only man is the man whom God knows, and that he is always subject to God-ordained harmony. They held firmly to the fact that there are no enemies in the presence of good.

Whenever the unlovely picture seemed to be manifest, the students expressed more love, knowing that Love has dominion. It was with great joy that they gradually perceived more friendliness on the part of their neighbor, and within a short time the two families became good friends.

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