Editorial January 30, 1954 Issue

THE GREATEST LOVE

Helen Wood Bauman

Christ Jesus stated the high purpose to which his life among men was dedicated when he said (John 15:13), "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Christian Science, which interprets the Master's life and shows the scientific meaning of his acts and teachings, explains that he laid down the mortal sense of life, which seemed to be his own, in order to prove that man is purely spiritual—God's immortal likeness. This he did with devotion to all men and with joy in his own accomplishment.

This was not a doleful sacrifice of self, not a destruction of individuality, but a putting off of mortal consciousness, the unreal mind, which strangely makes man and all creation appear to be material and destructible. The Master's sacrifice revealed his spiritual individuality; and in the ascension the physical sense of life disappeared to him; he rose above it.

It is mortal consciousness, claiming to be one's own physical senses, that all must learn to lay down on the basis of its unreality if they are to escape from the flesh and find their ever-expanding real life in Spirit. And this must be done individually. The very term self-sacrifice implies that it is the self—the false sense of self—that does the sacrificing. The greatest love anyone can express for others is to reject the mortal view of them, which the seeming physical senses present, and accept only the impressions of manhood received from God through spiritual sense.

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