Editorial January 5, 1963 ISSUE

Unselfed Love

Helen Wood Bauman

Here are arresting words written by our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy: "What has not unselfed love achieved for the race? All that ever was accomplished, and more than history has yet recorded" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 238). There is a difference between what is often thought of as personal unselfishness and unselfed love. Human unselfishness is a quality which is highly commendable when sensibly expressed. But if it is unwisely expressed, it is capable of doing harm, perhaps by fostering a spirit of imposition in others or by encouraging them to shirk responsibilities. Sometimes a personal sense of unselfishness turns into self-righteousness, and then it loses proper direction.

Christian Science teaches unselfed love, which can never cause one to make mistakes or to do harm. This kind of love is right and scientific. It demonstrates real selfhood and reveals that man is made in the image of God, who is Love itself. It leads one to abandon the mortal sense of self, which is conscious of and consequently supports a sinful, material world and its ills. Unselfed love inspires one to give all for Christ, the true idea of sonship. Christ Jesus must have been explaining scientific love when he said (John 15:13), "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Unselfed love is the key to all spiritual accomplishment. It never lacks right direction, for it includes the wisdom that knows true goals. It never makes mistakes, for it holds within it the intelligence that cannot err. It never harms, but corrects as it transforms and heals. When self-forgetful service imbues an individual's activities, his real identity shines through the cloud of materialistic thinking and graces human consciousness with gleams of spiritual truth.

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