Questioner: Quite a bit has been done in integrating schools and opening up jobs for minority groups. Frankly, a lot of these activities seem to be mostly on the surface. With all the fears and the misunderstandings that remain in the world today, I wonder whether it's realistic to expect anything more.

Speaker: Oh, yes. I think we can expect to penetrate to the very heart of the problems that divide men, though I agree that many of the barriers that separate people still remain.

But aren't these barriers based on fear and uncertainty of what people think may happen if they drop their prejudices? Sometimes these fears are pretty deep-seated, and it takes a real, penetrating change of heart to remove them.

Questioner: But it's pretty difficult, isn't it, for some to change their deep-rooted way of thinking about this group or that one?

Speaker: I was thinking recently of the change of heart that the early Christians had to find after Jesus' ascension. The Apostle Peter, for example, with all that he had learned from Christ Jesus, still had a deep-seated conviction that God's love wasn't large enough to include all mankind. But when his consciousness was further spiritually enlightened, he realized that God embraces all men in His love. And he was able to declare: "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34).

Didn't he realize that God's love for man can't bounded by any racial or national differences and that the barriers that he had believed existed really had no divine sanction?

If we can get a glimpse of God's limitless love for all men, this is what brings about a change of heart within us. It's God, the action of His love, that really produces the change. In the book of Ezekiel we read that God says (36:26), "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh." Now, Moffatt translates this last part, "I will take away your hard nature and give you a nature that can be touched."

Questioner: Suppose, though, that a person has this hardened nature. How can he be changed?

Speaker: Through our work in Christian Science we're finding that really there's no such thing as a hardhearted man incapable of change. Of course, we see plenty of people who give all appearances of being stubbornly resistant to the touch of love. But that's a superimposed characteristic, totally unlike man in the image and likeness of God. I say superimposed because it's like a mask: it's hiding the true nature of man in God's likeness.

The Godlike nature of man is present with each one of us. All that's needed is to bring it to light. And it's the power of divine Love, God, that does this.

Questioner: I can see how this can change an individual, one person, but we're talking about removing barriers which divide men.

Speaker: Yes, but it has to start with individuals, doesn't it? Love is contagious. As we begin to express more of the qualities of God's love, this affects other people also. I had an office in a building some years ago in which the elevator operators were all members of a minority race. Most of the passengers just ignored them. Well, I had been in the habit of saying "thank you" when the operator took me to my floor, and so I continued that in this building. Gradually I noticed that others were doing this too. And after some months had passed, this seemed to be a pretty normal procedure for the passengers. Now, I'm not saying that I started this, but I do think that the custom spread because it had begun with just a few.

The transforming power of God's love works in much the same way to remove the barriers that divide men. God's love touches one heart and produces a change. In this way the hardness of heart fades away, and a more Godlike nature that can be touched is brought to light. And when this change takes place, it begins to touch the other fellow and is a help to him also.

Questioner: Do we have to love everything about the fellow? Perhaps he's seething with resentment; he may be unfriendly.

Speaker: We have to see through this superimposed mask that would hide one's true nature. Each one of us is the child of God even though the appearance does not seem to indicate it at the moment. You know, the choice is ours. We can go along with hate or antipathy or anger if we want to. Or we can take an active position of yielding our thought to God's love, letting God's love be expressed through our thought and through our action.

Let me give you an example of a woman who proved this in what could have been a pretty rough racial situation. She's a Christian Scientist, and she and her husband had gone to a theater which had just been racially integrated in the southern part of the United States.

Upon leaving the theater, they were confronted with a hostile mob. They found police trying to prevent any riot from breaking out and trying to keep peace between the Negroes and the whites. The woman and her husband were asked to go back into the theater and stay there until the Negroes could leave.

Now, at first she was frightened. But she was as concerned for the safety of the Negroes as she was for herself, and she turned at once to her understanding of God and to the universality of His love. Well, several comforting passages from the Bible and from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, came to her thought. Gradually her fear lessened because she was inspired to realize that God's love includes all his children and that nobody's left out.

Then she went to the telephone booth in the theater and called a Christian Science practitioner, who reminded her that everybody involved was a child of God and that true nature of each one was governed by God.

They prayed to see that no hardness of heart, no anger, no resentment, or even scorn was part of man's real nature as the child of God. And then she began to realize the need for an understanding heart, that it would have to express compassion, charity, patience, for all of the people.

Well, within about five minutes the tension was alleviated. The policemen then allowed the Negroes to leave the theater, and this they did with only minor harassment. The tension, the malice, the hatred had simply dissipated. The crowd dispersed very quickly, and that was the end of it.

Questioner: Certainly if everybody would make such an effort we could probably remove many of the barriers which divide us.

Speaker: Yes. As Mrs. Eddy says in one of her books (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 50): "The human affections need to be changed from self to benevolence and love for God and man; changed to having but one God and loving Him supremely, and helping our brother man." And she adds further on, "This change of heart is essential to Christianity, and will have its effect physically as well as spiritually, healing disease."

Now, this is a practical, Christlike change of heart that has its effect not only on ourselves but on others too.