How Is It Possible to "love thy neighbour as thyself"?

ERIKA MÖBUS

No demand upon us is more urgent than that we love our neighbor as ourselves.

This is easier said than done. How can we love a neighbor who appears to be anything but lovable and who has irritated or injured us? That seems like an unfair challenge, until the spiritual understanding of the oneness and allness of a divine, supreme, infinite Mind dawns upon our thought. How do we arrive at this understanding?

The Christian Scientist finds that a prayerful readiness, a humble, deep inclination toward God, good, and a sincere effort to lead a life in harmony with divine Truth and Love, lifts his thought from a worldly sense of things to spiritual perception. Essential to this end is his daily study of the Bible in the light of Christian Science —a study that the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly outlines for him each week, and that he pursues further in the writings of Mrs. Eddy. Through this study he comes to recognize the distinction she makes between so-called mortals—men as they are too generally seen, sinning, suffering, and dying—and the true, immortal man God has created. She says in Science and Health, "Mortal man is the antipode of immortal man in origin, in existence, and in his relation to God."^{Science and Health, p. 215;}