True selfhood is the expression of God; to love it is a divine idea. Christ Jesus exemplified this truth. In his remarkably concise and comprehensive summary of the law, he quoted as the second great commandment (Matt. 22:39), "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes of this commandment (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 88), "To love one's neighbor as one's self, is a divine idea;" and then she adds, "but this idea can never be seen, felt, nor understood through the physical senses."

The command to love oneself may seem startling until, through the teachings of Christian Science, one is enabled to distinguish clearly the difference between loving oneself and self-love. To know and be what God creates is to love oneself. God creates man as His idea, spiritual and incorporeal. One cannot love himself until he comprehends in some degree this great fact and endeavors to separate himself from a material concept of being.

Self-love, in contradistinction, is ignorance of God and His creation and is contrary to ideal human behavior. It suggests a mortal personality that expresses pride, conceit, and self-righteousness. Mrs. Eddy writes (ibid., p. 242): "Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error,— self-will, self-justification, and self-love, —which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death."

Through the study of Christian Science, we learn that self-love is primarily a belief of life and intelligence in matter, a condition of mortal thought which can be dissolved only through the application of divine Love. The solvent of Love is at work in human consciousness as one strives to obey the commandment to love one's true selfhood. The obvious evidences of self-love, as well as the more subtle ones expressed as servility and self-depreciation, yield to the regenerating power of divine Love.

Is it possible to love our neighbor other than the way in which we love ourselves? Indeed it is not. All experience is individual and consists solely of our own mental concepts. We are able to see in others only what is present in our own thought. Therefore the obligation to our neighbor cannot be fulfilled except as we first correctly love and cherish ourselves. The self we are to love is man, made in the image and likeness of God. It is spiritual consciousness, constituting one's real being. True selfhood is spiritual identity.

To cherish our spiritual identity means to love and treasure it, to regard it with tenderness and pure affection. It is to nurture and nourish our concept of ourselves as God's ideas. We love our identity by holding it ever in consciousness as spiritual and by appreciating its worth as that which God creates and loves.

As we increase in the understanding and love of our true selfhood, it is inevitable that this love flow out to include our neighbor by recognizing him also as a spiritual idea, not a mortal, and by aiding him in self-forgetful service. In his parable of the good Samaritan, who poured wine and oil into the wounds of a stranger and took him to an inn to be cared for until he was well, Jesus depicted unmistakably the unselfed love of the true neighbor.

As we pour the wine of inspiration into our thought of a neighbor and use the oil of gentleness and charity in our relationships with him, we exemplify our love. As we care for our neighbor, let us be sure too that we are loving him without a suggestion of personal superiority or inferiority. There is no possible place in spiritual consciousness, the expression of infinite, impartial Love, for either of these false states of thinking. We know in Christian Science that God has created and will ever love all His ideas in perfect equality.

The parable of the Samaritan leaves no doubt about the identity of the neighbor, but who is the wounded man, the stranger left half-dead? Sometimes he may be our own unloved self. When this happens, how quickly we should begin to pour in the wine and oil of consecrated effort, turn to the all-loving Father, and love our true self, which is ever present to spiritual consciousness.

Jesus deeply loved and recognized his true selfhood. He was able to say (John 10:30), "I and my Father are one." What Jesus accomplished naturally may require much faithful practice on our part, but let us begin now and be consistent and persistent in loving our true selfhood. As we do so, we shall rejoice increasingly in loving and serving our neighbor.