Divine, infinite Love knows no hatred and vengeance, no cold criticism. Nor is the real man, Love's image and likeness, ever a vehicle for their expression. We discern this Love and find the true sense of selfhood as we refuse to be anything less than love. "I will love, if another hates," writes Mary Baker Eddy. "I will gain a balance on the side of good, my true being. This alone gives me the forces of God wherewith to overcome all error." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 104.}

We have the ability both to love and to feel divine Love's all-presence, regardless of the pictures of unrestrained animality and jealous hatred that many a day's events would impress upon us. From a culture foreign to Christian thought comes news of laws regulating the rights of hate. A "Bill of Vengeance" brought to a parliament gives, according to a columnist in The New York Times, "a more chilling insight than any reports of speeches or riots into the texture of life which the dominant factions seek to impose." ^{The New York Times, June 15, 1981 .} Closer to home we find a diatribe of unjust criticism attacking those whom we know to be among the best of human beings.

Of course, we don't love the evil words and deeds. But we can love, honestly and compassionately, those violators of human rights abroad, the attackers of our friends at home, because we have available to us—as it is to all mankind—the very love of Love. Biblical examples tell us the scope of such pure love, its possibilities, when fully lived, to change the course of government action, to renew the trust of a tired humanity.

Above defense, beyond retaliation, is this love. Christ Jesus prayed for his crucifiers, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." ^{Luke 23:34.} As persecutors stoned him, Stephen "kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." ^{Acts 7:60.} Joseph, when he faced his brothers who had betrayed and nearly killed him, pleaded, "Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life." ^{Gen. 45:5.}

In reality, the forces of Love always preserve life, and they do this by restoring our love. If tempted to retort hotly, or to allow a cold indifference to deepen, we may well consider our scriptural heroes and accept the rebuke their lives may cast on ours. Dropping self-justification, we can reach into true spiritual selfhood and find the means to love everyone every time; and find the way to fervently pray and let those prayers be vehicles of light to people momentarily forsaking their legitimate humaneness.

The more we know of God, who is Love, the less we are able to tolerate what is unlike Love in ourselves. Our own critical reactions sting our lips, and indifference brings a heaviness of heart that will not lift until we find our natural love restored. It is useful that we should suffer if our lack of love has stripped our lives. It is more useful to love, and forestall such suffering.

Christian love is not selective, not separate from other facets of God's nature—lawfulness and all-intelligence. Nor is it at the beck and call of whim or mood. It is the basis of all genuine feelings, whether they bear on personal affairs or world conditions. Love is the reality that persists through all that is unlike it, for this reflected love is also reflected from Truth. And the Truth that is God can know nothing that would turn pure affection back or shut it off.

Self-love is a weak, counterfeit love, indifferent to world needs, affronted by opposition. It is not love at all, but more like fear and hate, and is destructive to its indulger. But self-love dissolves before reflected love. A life softened by divine Love's touch is reshaped to do Love's work at home and abroad, in the smaller situation and the international need. Indeed, the two are related, and unless we recognize this, we will not value the impact our prayers can have around the world, and will not offer them. Nor will we be alert to the spiritual dullness that the acceptance of hate displayed by others may produce in our lives.

Spiritual goodness, joy, and a knowledge of the continuity and eternality of life are concomitants of Love's manifestation and cannot be had without it. Nor can they be withheld when Love is demonstrated. "This is the doctrine of Christian Science," notes the textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy: "that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never produce mind nor life result in death." ^{Science and Health, p. 304.}

Divine Love impelled Christ Jesus' life. The result was healing for others—even for us today who have the example of his life to refine and glorify our own. The Master's life proved the power of reflected love to transform the earth.

We express this Christly love as we allow it to cut through the callousness of harsh experiences, to expose the selfishness of sensuality, to reveal man's true nature as the very manifestation and object of divine Love. We can, with Mrs. Eddy, "love, if another hates." We can take love's initiative when coldness prevails. When offended, we can forgive. Forgiveness so often accompanies a deeper love; indeed there is no forgiveness without love. Mrs. Eddy translates Jesus' prayer "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" ^{Matt. 6:12.} thus: "And Love is reflected in love." ^{Science and Health, p. 17.}

Love's forces move us above and beyond mere mortal reaction into the healing activity of Christ. If despairing at the lovelessness that may confront us, the confusion that would stultify our own impulse to love, the self-protection that insulates us from another's need, we can call on Love's forces. They overcome all error. And there is no other legitimate power anywhere.

BEULAH M. ROEGGE