Editorial October 5, 1981 Issue

The forces of Love

BEULAH M. ROEGGE

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.

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