LOVE ALONE HAS POWER

When Christ Jesus was asked by the Pharisee lawyer to indicate the great commandment in the law, he answered by giving that marvelous summation of the Ten Commandments (Matt. 12: 37 ): "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." And he added: "The second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Jesus' disciple John counseled (I John 4:7, 8 ): "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love."

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, also defines God as Love and makes it clear that in order to demonstrate that we are born of this divine Love, we must be loving. Everyone responds to the power of Love reflected.

Christian Science teaches that to reflect Love, the Love that lifts us above the friction and enmity of material sense, is our very reason for living. In one of her poems, entitled "Love," Mrs. Eddy declares (Poems, p. 7 ),

Our Leader's own selfless life of loving service, bringing healing to humanity, gives eloquent proof of the supreme importance of divine Love in her life. She says of Love (Miscellaneous Writing, pp. 249, 250 ): "What a word! I am in awe before it. Over what worlds on worlds it hath range and is sovereign! the underived, the incomparable, the infinite All of good, the alone God, is Love."

In grappling with such human emotions as envy and jealousy or their bosom companions, resentment, animosity, and hate, one finds great comfort in knowing that these are but godless suggestions of personal sense, hence powerless, that they have no more to do with man than with God, and that they can be wiped out of human experience proportionately as one reflects the power of Love.

We should strive for the correct view of man, to see our brother only as God's image and likeness, and to know that the real man is incapable of hatred. When we lift consciousness to reflect the Father's benevolence and kindness, when we truly love with the Father's compassion and tender affection, there is no room or opportunity for complaint, criticism, censure, or condemnation to find expression in our experience.

Steadfastness in seeing our fellow men as actually free, guiltless, and loving will bring great reward and make tangible to us the truth that Love alone has power. The reflection of this power makes possible such holy experiences as that of Jacob when, with his fear and animosity finally cleansed away by love, he could say to his avenging brother, Esau (Gen. 33:10 ), "I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God."

The individual understands the nature of God as Love to the degree that he loves. When he reflects the warmth and glow of Love, its irradiance and power, he expresses loving-kindness to all with whom he comes in contact. He finds it natural to be forbearing and forgiving, to be patient with another's shortcomings, to minister with tenderness to another's wounds. Jesus taught (Matt. 5:7 ), "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy." And Paul said (I Cor. 13: 8 ), "Charity never faileth."

If we would reflect the power of divine Love to heal and save, we must understand that God loves every individual completely and impartially. A little boy, a pupil in the Christian Science Sunday School, learned well the power of God's tender love for him and for all. He awakened one night manifesting the symptoms of a serious disease then gripping the community in which he lived. His mother called a Christian Science practitioner and handed the child the telephone receiver so that he could hear the message for himself.

The practitioner said in substance that God is Love, the Giver of all good, and that God was the child's very Life; that God loved him too much to let him be sick. The healing was instantaneous. And not only had the disease disappeared, but also chronic quarreling with an older brother had quickly melted away, because the boy's consciousness had been flooded with the realization of the power of God and His great love for each of His ideas.

In later years this boy, now an earnest student of Christian Science, made a study of Love and found much inspiration in considering also the other synonyms for God which Mrs. Eddy gives in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," namely Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, Principle. He noted that throughout her writings our Leader often joins Love with divine Principle.

Since divine Principle, the only source of all that really exists, is supreme over the universe, including individual, spiritual man, it therefore follows that Love, the source of all existence, also is supreme over all being. And so in regarding Love, the divine Principle, as the infinite Giver, the student saw that Love gives man the intelligence of Mind, the beauty and perception of Soul, the substance and indestructibility of Spirit, the harmonious, ceaseless activity of Life, the integrity of Truth.

Science and Health says (p. 6 ): " 'God is Love." More than this we cannot ask, higher we cannot look, farther we cannot go." This statement lifts our thought to the superlative nature and all-inclusive power of Love, which each consecrated seeker for Truth must reflect.