The standard of living is a familiar topic of discussion these days. But what of a standard of loving? Perhaps we think of loving as too vague and impractical for any standard.

Yet the life of Christ Jesus teaches us that the purpose of living is to express unlimited divine Love. Our Master's love for God and man equipped him with power and truth. Christian Science examines the quality of our love in the light of the Love that is God.

Divine Love, God, pours forth boundless blessedness upon His perfect, spiritual creation, which includes man as God's likeness. Man reflects this love. And this reflection is the basis of achieving the kind of love that instinctively forgives enemies and heals discord.

Christian Science demonstrates that divine Love—rather than human emotion—heals. When people yield to God's infinite power, they find divine Love to be the only reality, Truth, and substance of existence. When this is realized, the human condition assumes more health and wholesomeness, and begins to conform to the divine ideal.

Think of the infinite dimension of Spirit, God, filling all space with divine goodness! Man has no life, intelligence, nor love of his own; he reflects these directly from God. We can know ourselves as the immortal reflection of infinite Love. Anything other than this spiritual standard of God and man is false. Matter, evil, mortality, are uncreated, unreal, unliving, and can be proved to be illusion. Clearly understanding these facts of Spirit and matter helps us to love as Jesus loved, thereby raising our standard of loving.

Purification of thought wipes out false concepts that would claim reality for illness, wrongdoing, and death. God created no such mistakes. Where an illusory mind seems to produce discordant matter, the divine Mind reveals omnipotent perfection through its Christly idea, spiritual man.

The works of Christ Jesus refuted the worldly insistence that man is a weak, fallen mortal. The Master won a series of victories for Spirit. Because the materiality of mortal thought has no power to show man as he really is, it drops away as we listen to the divine Mind lovingly unfold man's identity as spiritual reflection. Mrs. Eddy writes: "Human theories are helpless to make man harmonious or immortal, since he is so already, according to Christian Science. Our only need is to know this and reduce to practice the real man's divine Principle, Love." ^{Science and Health, p. 490.}

This point was realized by a man facing uncooperativeness on the part of his family. He sat down one day, determined to find some answers. In the Bible he discovered, "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named . . . ." ^{Eph. 3:14, 15.} Named of the Father! This, then, was his spiritual identity and that of his family. They were not—any of them, himself included—discordant mortals but immortal ideas of God. He became aware of a great peace in the household, so strong he felt he could reach out and touch it. He saw the standard he must attain, where, through the uplifting power of love, he would recognize himself, his family, and others as carrying the identity God had given.

Divine Love purifies our standard as we relinquish dependence on matter and turn to the view God has. Enriched, protected, cared for, we find Love unveiled through spiritual understanding. Mrs. Eddy summarizes: "Heaven's signet is Love. We need it to stamp our religions and to spiritualize thought, motive, and endeavor." ^{Christian Healing, p. 19.}

Love affirms God and man as inseparable, perfect. This inseparability, recognized, provides us with a standard for loving— now and always.