Paul, the great Apostle to the Gentiles, clearly recognized the essential brotherhood of all men. His missionary travels brought him into contact with many of the races and religions then existent in the Roman Empire. This imparted a profound compassion and respect for other men, regardless of their different customs, color, or creeds. Genuine Christianity taught Paul to look beyond the limited evidence of the material senses. He learned to behold all real identities held in perfect concord within the allness of God, divine Love. Thinking from this standpoint, he wrote to the church at Colosse, "There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all." ^{Col. 3:11;}

On many occasions Paul's fidelity to this wider concept of affection and concern must have been sorely taxed. Hardship, persecution, and physical violence were often his lot as he went about his work; but, regardless of the provocation, he persisted in his struggle to see the innate goodness of man. This sustained him, filled his thought with love, and enabled him to perform his unparalleled service to the cause of Christianity.

Peter, too, had to outgrow a limited sense of brotherhood. His upbringing and environment had instilled in him the belief that salvation was the special prerogative of the Jews. Spiritual growth opened his eyes, and he said, "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him."  ^{Acts 10:34, 35;}

Today Christian Science is revealing the scientific spiritual law and logic on which a universal sense of love is based. It is teaching us that the primal cause, or creative Principle, of all real being is divine Love, and that this loving Mind is one unbroken, undivided Whole. Because of the allness of Love nothing that it creates can be separated from Love, nothing can be discordant, divisive, disrupting, or hateful. Man, God's spiritual expression, must partake of his Father's nature, must know nothing but the concordant unity of all real being in and of the one Spirit, or Soul.

Knowing something of these great facts, each student of Christian Science has a solemn responsibility to contribute to the cause of universal brotherhood by the spirituality of his own thoughts and acts. He learns that he can help humanity best by first evangelizing himself. In the circle of his home environment he can express the patience, gentleness, tolerance, humility, thoughtfulness, and willing cooperation that lubricate family contacts and events. This gives him a consistent, proven base on which to build a wider helpfulness or service to mankind. Christ Jesus said, "First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."  ^{Matt. 7:5;}

The spiritual vision that effectively heals physical disease, purifies the sinner, destroys lack and loneliness, can also weigh mightily in the healing of political and racial disease. It can help lift humanity above the selfishness, lust, and hate that engender crime and warfare. And no one need feel helpless in face of the seeming magnitude of world problems. For over a century Christian Science has been proving that material conditions, great or small, are but mortally mental images, figments of the carnal, or mortal, mind, and therefore have no more real substance than a dream.

In actual fact, the real universe, including the true identities of all men, is the perfect, harmonious, spiritual expression of one infinite divine Mind. We can help our brother men find peace and concord by acknowledging this great fact and denying the false evidence called rivalry and strife. This is effective prayer. It leavens the collective human consciousness with the unifying truth of being. Because of its mental nature human experience can be lifted up into a closer and still closer semblance of the divine perfection.

Mrs. Eddy was constantly at work for the good of mankind. No one since the days of the primitive Church has demonstrated brotherhood of such a high level as she did. In her work of establishing the Cause of Christian Science she was persecuted and maligned, but through it all she maintained a scientific sense of infinite Love and of Love's expression, spiritual man. She refused to hate person. She proved in her own life much of the tenderness and forbearance she preached to others.

She writes: "Faith full-fledged, soaring to the Horeb height, brings blessings infinite, and the spirit of this orison is the fruit of Rightness,—'on earth peace, good will toward men.' On this basis the brotherhood of all peoples is established; namely, one God, one Mind, and 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' the basis on which and by which the infinite God, good, the Father-Mother Love, is ours and we are His in divine Science." ^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 281.}

Alan A. Aylwin