Article August 31, 1957 Issue

THE FIRST AND LAST LESSON IS LOVE

VERA H. SHEPHARD

"Remember that the first and last lesson of Christian Science is love, perfect love, and love made perfect through the cross," admonishes Mary Baker Eddy in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 138). Since love is the first and last lesson, it necessarily includes every other lesson, a fact too often forgotten in our daily contacts, in business, in our homes, and even in our church work. The cross through which love is made perfect is the cross which forces us to purify self by conquering self-love, self-pity, self-importance, self-opinion, self-righteousness, self-justification —all at variance with the first and last lesson, which is love.

One may wonder at times why a branch church is not growing more rapidly; why it is not more prosperous; why the Sunday School is not better attended. Then he may well ask himself if he has been neglecting the first and last lesson.

As members of branch churches, we need to gain a better understanding of Church through the study of our Leader's references on the subject that our thought may be clarified and purified of all that is unlike the Christ-consciousness. This study may make us realize how often we have thought of others as not living up to the highest sense of Church when we should have been clearing our own thought and thus living up to the highest concept of it ourselves. If we have yielded to the temptation to think of statements we read in articles or in the Lesson-Sermon from the Christian Science Quarterly in connection with someone else's shortcomings rather than our own, we should be grateful to have this critical and unloving attitude uncovered. For it is fatal to our own peace of mind and certainly no help in solving inharmonious conditions in a church.

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