Article February 28, 1970 Issue

Love Dissolves the Hard Rock of Self

KATHLEEN O'CONNOR

On the road to Damascus Paul had a vision of the Christ, the true idea of Love, that led him to renounce the "sounding brass" and "tinkling cymbal" I Cor. 13:1; of self-assertion, domination, and aggression, which had caused him to persecute the followers of Jesus. This spiritual awakening opened the door to the Love which healed him of his blindness and later inspired him to write that sublime treatise on spiritual love, or charity, which we find in I Corinthians, Chapter 13. The spiritual understanding and practice of this love dissolves the adamant, or stonelike hardness, of a false sense of self.

Mrs. Eddy writes, "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." Science and Health, p. 242;

Self-will is founded on the belief of a finite self apart from God, good, and is the counterfeit of God's will. Disregarding divine Principle and the rights of others, self-will inevitably leads to frustration and disappointment. One can imagine the discord and chaos there would be in an orchestra, for example, should one member insist on his own interpretation of the music, irrespective of the other players, and ignore the baton of the conductor. The true musician subordinates his own performance to that of the whole, in which each has his part, however small, all cooperating under the direction of the maestro.

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