Article October 20, 1973 Issue

The Importance of Loving

MARGARET NOBLE PLEASANT

Loving our fellowman is not something we can do or not do as we choose. Only as we love do we know God as divine Principle, Love, and find real happiness. Jesus told his disciples very plainly that if they would truly worship God they could not harbor ill feeling against their brother. They must first be reconciled to their brother and then come to the altar of God. (See Matt. 5:22–24.)

Mrs. Eddy puts it unequivocally, too, when she says, in speaking of Jesus' command to love: "The life of Christ Jesus, his words and his deeds, demonstrate Love. We have no evidence of being Christian Scientists except we possess this inspiration, and its power to heal and to save."^{Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 8;}

True love is not one person consenting to feel human affection for another. Rather, it is seeing our fellowman aright as God's perfect idea, reflecting the qualities of divine Love, and then separating evil from him and knowing that it is no part of his real selfhood.

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