"As I have loved you"

LOUISE RAVENS

Christ Jesus ' "new commandment . . . That ye love one another," is probably one of the first admonitions brought to the attention of the student of Christian Science. Indeed, he can hardly hope to make much progress in the apprehension of Truth unless he perceives in a measure the significance of this command; for as the Apostle John declared, "He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." And a knowledge of God is the foundation of Christian Science. It may even be said that an exact understanding of the nature of infinite Being is the all of divine Science, since "there is none else beside him."

But how shall we proceed in the attempt to love those apparently imperfect mortals with whom we are associated day by day? How shall we overlook their faults, how condone their shortcomings, which are so like our own? This is, to be sure, a toilsome task. Fortunately, it is not the path our love must take, if it is to compare with the pure affection of him who was master of this divine art.

In his last hours of counsel and loving exhortation to his disciples, having first exemplified the beauty of humility in washing his disciples' feet, Jesus gave them "a new commandment . . . as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." He also said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." We know, of course, that in this statement he referred to the relinquishing of a material sense of existence. Throughout the years of his ministry, in preaching and in practice, he was lifting thought above the mortal sense of life for himself and for others, and now in his final entreaty to his students he bade them love as he had loved.

The acknowledgment of Life as Spirit, with the accompanying renunciation of a material concept of persons and things, through ascending thought, was the basis of his so-called miracles, and was evidenced in all of Jesus' healing work. It must not be supposed, however, that he rose above belief in mortal, material existence merely for the purpose of demonstration. Rather, his healing works naturally followed as a result of his spiritual ascendancy. He did not admit the reality of matter, and then set about to improve it by means of spiritual thinking. The Master gave abundant proof that his only purpose was to glorify God, to bear witness to the great fact of Mind's allness and the coexistence of God and man as divine Principle and divine idea. Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 26), "His mission was to reveal the Science of celestial being, to prove what God is and what He does for man." And again she says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 162), "To carry out his holy purpose, he must beoblivious of human self." He could not prove the infinity of good unless he rejected the false evidence of the finite senses; and, contrariwise, he knew that the omnipresence of divine Mind precludes the existence of any other mind or any other presence.

In effacing the belief of a selfhood apart from God, Jesus replaced illusion with reality, error with Truth, and mortal seeming with the spiritual evidence of Life and immortality. Because he refused to believe in death, he restored others and he himself finally rose above this false belief. Because he recognized Spirit as the only substance, he could meet his own needs and those of mankind. And because he saw the nothingness of evil, he cast out devils.

The ascension of Jesus' thought was continuous. Whether he walked with his disciples along the dusty highway, spoke in parables from a fishing boat, or spent the night in prayer on some mountaintop, his thought dwelt not in mortality, but in the eternal blessedness which is inseparable from Spirit. As a consequence, material belief, however presented, constantly yielded to his realization of the immutable law of Love, so that without apparent effort on his part "as many as touched were made perfectly whole." His unwavering acknowledgment of the Christ as his true selfhood repudiated the testimony of a fictitious carnal mind. This is the high goal of attainment which Jesus enjoins upon his followers.

Self-abnegation is achieved in the measure of our fidelity to Truth. And, paradoxical though it may seem, our love for humanity will be commensurate with the extent to which we eliminate from our thinking the false sense of existence, substituting therefor the true idea of Love, and recognizing man as the divine image. Nor would it be possible to find more practical proofs of the efficacy of this simple rule than those presented by Jesus himself. The sick and the sinning found refuge in his compassion, and his love was sufficient to bless even those who reviled him. In the light of such genuine affection, the shortcomings of our friends will cease to beguile us into a belief of their reality, and we shall, moreover, find our own debts canceled, forgiven, because we are losing sight of the mortal self in beholding spiritual man.

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