Because God is Love and because Love is universal, divine mercy is present everywhere to comfort mankind. Christ Jesus proved this to be true by his many compassionate works. When he was about to leave the world, he said to his disciples (John 14:16, 17), "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth." And he promised, "I will not leave you comfortless."

"The Spirit of truth" is the Christ, the divine nature, which man in God's likeness embodies. This divine nature, which all may express, has power over the carnal, or mortal, mind; and it comfortingly wipes out whatever is unlike God's creation of good. Speaking of the spirit of divine Love which Jesus possessed, practiced, and taught, Mary Baker Eddy says (Message to The Mother Church for 1901, p. 9), "This spirit of God is made manifest in the flesh, healing and saving men,—it is the Christ, Comforter, 'which taketh away the sin of the world.'"

Mrs. Eddy's discovery of Divine Science has brought to the world this Comforter, "the Spirit of truth," which frees in merciful ways those who find themselves caught by the mortal sense of life in its web of sin and sickness, strife and poverty. The spirit of Truth and Love existed before Jesus expressed the mercy of God, and it exists today. Centuries of mortal darkness could not put out the light which Divine Science reveals in its universality. Like a vivid thread, this merciful Christ-spirit appears in the fabric of religious history recorded in the Scriptures.

God's mercy was early evident in the experience of Hagar, who wandered in the wilderness with young Ishmael after she was cast out by Sarah, Abraham's wife. Even this bondwoman and her son were comforted in their plight. God, who had blessed Ishmael and promised to make him a great nation, heard the lad's cry and opened the eyes of his mother. She saw at hand a well of water which preserved her life and her son's posterity (see Genesis 21).

Jacob, Joseph and his brethren, Moses, the Israelites, the Shunammite, and even Rahab, as well as many others, felt the Christ-spirit and experienced the mercy which always accompanies it. In the Master's day, multitudes became aware of "the Spirit of truth," which he shed on all, and were healed.

So inclusive is the mercy of God that identity is never lost to Him, even when it is seemingly obscured by the claims of the physical senses. Whoever appeals to God finds mercy in the measure of his readiness to receive it. God hears the honest prayer because He impels that prayer. He stands ready to forgive sinners—to destroy sin—the moment they forsake evil. God's forgiveness is the demonstration of His universal knowledge of reality, the perfectness of His sons.

Regardless of the inequities of the human race, perfection awaits all men as the spiritual order of God's creation becomes understood. One great mission of the Comforter is mercifully to teach mankind that Love is impartial and infinite in its bestowals. Our power to uplift humanity will be in the measure of our compassionate desire to forward the appearing of the perfect man, who is made in God's image and who possesses by reflection all the good that God possesses. Condemnation of individuals, nations, and races is dropped when one learns through Science that all which is evil or material has no actual existence in the light of Love's infinitude.

One gains nothing by emphasizing or by attempting to retaliate the aggressions of those he might call enemies. Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 11), "Love metes not out human justice, but divine mercy." And she continues, "We must love our enemies in all the manifestations wherein and whereby we love our friends; must even try not to expose their faults, but to do them good whenever opportunity occurs."

Such instruction is given in the spirit of the Master. Once when he was asked by the disciples if they should command fire to come down from heaven and consume the Samaritan villagers who had refused them hospitality, Jesus replied (Luke 9:55, 56): "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them."

The sinful and sorrowing and suffering need the haven of "the Spirit of truth," and they find in the presence of the Christlike consciousness release from the errors that would bind them. Instinctively they are drawn to those who will comfort them, rebuke them in mercy, and awaken them to a higher sense of life in God.

Furthermore, one cannot expect to express the power of divinity or to experience God's mercy in his own afflictions if he is unwilling to throw the mantle of charity over the sinner or to work to free him from the grasp of mortal mind. Christ Jesus taught (Matt. 5:7), "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy." Christian Science could say, "Blessed are the comforters: for they shall obtain comfort."

The Comforter reveals Love, which is entirely apart from physical sense and its impositions, to be the true abode of all. Divine Science lifts those who are obedient and merciful into the state of thought which demonstrates the allness of Love and which is empowered to destroy the false sense that attempts to reverse the order of Love's kingdom. "The divine order is the acme of mercy," as Mrs. Eddy says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 122). "The Christ, Comforter," is resistlessly restoring the true order, revealing to mankind the universal mercy of God and the man whom God cherishes as His son.

Helen Wood Bauman