The success of every human relationship throughout the ages has always been determined by the mental state of the individuals involved, not by their external circumstances. This fact has been rarely recognized, and it is still widely accepted that our present experience is determined by circumstances and conditions external to ourselves, and often beyond our control.

If this control is really available to mankind—and Christian Science proves daily that it is—how can we learn to exercise it? How can even one party to a relationship draw so consistently on the mental forces of harmony as to find secure happiness himself and steadily support the best for his neighbor?

A better human attitude, an ability to see the point of view of the other fellow or a refusal to react in an aggressive manner, is often the means whereby in our contact with others we can bring more harmony into our experience and indeed into theirs. But these human footsteps go only so far. When we turn to the career of Christ Jesus, we soon recognize that the pure understanding of spiritual Love and its demonstration constitute the only method, the only real answer to the problem of human relationships.

In the Gospel of Matthew we read that Jesus felt the need to go away with his disciples and pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew that the greatest test of his earthly career lay ahead, and he had to prepare his thought to meet it. He then left his disciples to pray, but on his return he found them sleeping. What a disappointment this could have been to him! But what was his reaction? A gentle chiding: "What, could ye not watch with me one hour?" ^{Matt. 26:40;} In the Glossary of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy has given us an inspiring definition of "Gethsemane" as "patient woe; the human yielding to the divine; love meeting no response, but still remaining love."  ^{Science and Health, p. 586;}

When we are met with hate, envy, jealousy, anger, resentment, and the like, what should be our response? If we react with retaliation or resentment, we only build up the problem. But a Christian Scientist knows that there is a right solution and that it must be based on using his understanding of what man really is, namely, the child of God's creating as revealed in the first chapter of Genesis: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."  ^{Gen. 1:26;} He has, therefore, to see that any suggestion that man is other than God's likeness is a lie about man. His response should always be "love . . . still remaining love." He cannot, must not, let whatever claims to be the action of the other fellow determine his course of conduct. In this approach to the problem of human relationships divine Love can be proved a power to break down all barriers of resistance to harmony.

Taking this mental attitude toward any problem involves spiritualization of thought. When we insist on the truth and persist in our endeavors to see man as he really is, there comes an awareness of the reality of spiritual individuality reflected from God and everywhere expressed. This obliterates from thought and experience the erroneous concept of a man expressing qualities unlike God.

Mortal thought is often tenacious and aggressive in its claims to identify some person as unlike the man God made. This is false belief about man, and the duration of the belief will be inversely proportionate to the effort we make in maintaining our declarations of what is true. The demand made of everyone is to demonstrate an ability to let go the false concept of man and persist in so doing.

Christian Science reveals and is proving to humanity that the understanding of Truth heals instantaneously. But at times mental argument—denying the various phases of error in our own thinking—may be required to free thought from erroneous suggestions about ourselves and others. How frequently in such cases, after we have stood firm, persisting, insisting, and claiming what is true, there dawns in consciousness a victorious awareness of the truth of that which is true! The scale has turned, and we know it. The healing is right there with us, even before the erroneous evidence has disappeared. This is the power of Truth, of the one Mind operating as law and obliterating from human experience all that is unlike good.

What we know, we are. We determine our experience; it is not determined for us. Therefore our knowing must reflect God's knowing, and anything else is false belief. Our ability to know is God-given, an inalienable right we all have. But we have to learn to use it. We cannot let the fact that we have this right remain static in thought. How do we use it? By claiming the reality of the one Mind, God, as the only Mind, which we, as God's image and likeness, reflect.

Throughout her writings Mrs. Eddy is pleading with her readers to learn to love more. In a letter to a student that appears in the Second Series of We Knew Mary Baker Eddy she states: "The healing will grow more easy and be more immediate as you realize that God, good, is all, and good is Love. You must gain Love, and lose the false sense called love. You must feel the Love that never faileth,—that perfect sense of divine power that makes healing no longer power but grace."  ^{We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Second Series, p. 25;}

The student of Christian Science learns that feeling love has nothing to do with material personalities but is that conscious awareness of Love as God which comes with warmth to a heart filled with gratitude. It is a state of consciousness purified and elevated above what aggressive suggestion would claim to say about man, in which thought reaches out to all people everywhere, claiming only God's abundant goodness for them and for ourselves. It is not merely repeating words to ourselves or others but attaining a combination of the spirit and the letter that confers such a realization as a hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal records:

What a priceless heritage Mrs. Eddy has given us—the opportunity and the ability to demonstrate that we can love!