Thus wrote our precious Leader in one of her most exquisite of Poems (p. 7). And still how slow we are to learn that we are conscious of truly living only as we truly love! Jesus epitomized the same wonderful truth when he embraced man's entire duty in the loving of God with the whole heart and mind and soul and strength, and the loving of one's neighbor as one's self. Love! Love! Love! Love alone as the one great necessity of existence! Thus have our Master and Leader defined for us the way of life.

We all want to love, to express all that is lovely and lovable, for this is man's God-given nature. Since God Himself is infinite Love, His image could not fail to be like Him; and so the very essence of man's real being, his one reflected purpose and desire, must always be to know and reflect divine Love. While Christian Scientists have thought much of Love and of loving, they have sometimes also talked so volubly on the subject—forgetting meanwhile to put what they talked into practice—that our Leader at one time found it well to sound a note of warning.

In her incomparably gentle manner Mrs. Eddy writes in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 312), "Oh, may the love that is talked, be felt! and so lived, that when weighed in the scale of God we be not found wanting." And then she goes on to give us one of the most wonderful descriptions of true love which was ever penned. She continues: "Love is consistent, uniform, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, unutterably kind; even that which lays all upon the altar, and, speechless and alone, bears all burdens, suffers all inflictions, endures all piercing for the sake of others, and for the kingdom of heaven's sake."

Error has sometimes claimed, however, to reverse this exalted demand and to argue to Christian Scientists that since they have not attained these heights it would be wise not to imagine they yet know enough of spiritual love to live it, much less to talk about it. Because they have listened to this evil voice, they have often appeared to be thinking and talking of almost everything apart from the Love that "alone is Life."

A careful rereading of Mrs. Eddy's words will certainly show plainly that not in any slightest way does she imply that we should stop talking love—assuredly not that we should cease living it! Because we have not yet reached its fullness in understanding and demonstration is no reason why we should not dwell in thought with it, talk of it, and put in practice all we know of it. The method of Christian Science teaches positively that to obtain any good we must begin and continue to declare for the presence and activity of that which we know is true and which we desire to bring into our experience.

To think continuously of Love, and of our necessary reflection of it as the children of God, is what will finally cause Love to be manifested to our present consciousness. This process will inevitably uncover in our thinking and living everything which is unlike Love. We have, then, only to pursue the further Christianly scientific method of denying and refusing—relinquishing—the supposititious opposites thus revealed, in order, so far as we are concerned, to find all space filled with divine Love and its manifestation.

Every thought of love we hold, every kind word we speak, every loving act we perform—in that measure we are learning to know eternal Life. Love is certainly the only reality and must consequently be the only power. We need not think, therefore, that the endeavor to cling perpetually to the affirmations of Love's omnipresence and omnipotence will in any way deaden us to the necessity of rebuking error whenever Principle so demands. Indeed, we may always remember that the living of love—the reflecting of gentleness, compassion, tenderness, patience—is itself always the most potent of rebukes.

Every time the truth Love's all-power and all-presence is honestly, earnestly declared, be it done ever so simply, every time there is a sincere effort to reflect this Love divine, just so much of true life has become visible to the human consciousness—just so much more of the spirit of Love has been made manifest among men! When all shall therefore unite in understanding and demonstrating the glad song, "Love alone is Life," then shall all that is false be done away and Love's kingdom shall have come on earth, "as it is in heaven." Then shall we have entered into eternal Life!

Ella W. Hoag