Article December 2, 1950 Issue

THE LESSER IDEA

ETHEL M. HOSKINS

"God gives the lesser idea of Himself for a link to the greater, and in return, the higher always protects the lower," writes our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, on page 518 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." In this beautiful statement we see revealed the tenderness of our loving Father-Mother God. We know that we, as in reality God's higher ideas, reflect His infinite tenderness, not only towards our brother men, but towards the lesser ideas which occupy a place in Mind.

The all-embracing Love which is God includes only such qualities as tenderness, goodness, understanding, and appreciation. Dislike and repulsion are unknown to divine Love; consequently they are unknown to Love's reflection, man. Not a single idea, great or small, is excluded from the boundless love expressed by man. Our understanding of this enables us to know that there is in reality no desire or will to inflict pain, to crush, and to destroy. Are we as Christian Scientists fully aware of our responsibility? Does the warmth of our love truly rest upon the creatures which we know through Science to be God's lesser ideas?

The way in which our Leader's universal love was reciprocated and the response she gained from the little creatures are beautifully brought out on page 247 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," where she says: "The little fishes in my fountain must have felt me when I stood silently beside it, for they came out in orderly line to the rim where I stood. Then I fed these sweet little thoughts that, not fearing me, sought their food of me."

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