Of all Christ Jesus' teachings perhaps the hardest for mankind to understand and fulfill is his command, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." ^{Matt. 5:44;}

To love a hateful, sinful mortal who has maliciously hurt one would seem to be a pretty big order for most people. According to this command of the Master's is one required to love persecution and hate? No, indeed, for the great Way-shower never condoned evil any more than he condemned men. He did not gloss over or ignore sin but was very firm and courageous in denouncing it, as he was when he overthrew the table of the money changers, whom he drove out of the temple, saying, "It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." ^21:13; He stood up to error and often openly rebuked it, but his purpose was to heal, to separate the evil act from the individual's real identity.

Christian Science, which reinstates Christ Jesus' healing method, shows us that man, the real self, is spiritual and entirely innocent of all the sins and sufferings of mortality. It teaches that all human weaknesses and discordant conditions are mesmeric illusions of material sense and unreal and impossible in the divine kingdom of Spirit, the only real creation. When we see man in this true light, in all the glory of his real selfhood, we cannot help loving him, for he is actually the loved of Love, God. To love an enemy, then, is to see him as he actually is, a child of God, and to want to awake him to this heritage. To have an enemy is to hold in thought the wrong concept of man, a conception entirely different from the true idea of man as divine Mind's reflection.

Loving our enemies becomes possible as we realize that genuine Christian love is love for God's spiritual idea, man. We all need to pray to see reflected in everyone qualities such as loving-kindness, integrity, and purity, with which our heavenly Father has endowed man, His perfect likeness. Negative qualities, such as cruelty, hate, envy, impurity, and dishonesty, need not be loved, however, for they are no part of God's man, and it is not God's will that we accept evil as belonging to anyone. To love anyone does not mean that we should make ourselves a doormat for him or ignore sin; it means that we should put sin in its place by refusing to identify it with individuals and by refusing to distort the Christ-image that we all reflect.

In Mrs. Eddy's article "Love Your Enemies" in Miscellaneous Writings she asks: "Who is thine enemy that thou shouldst love him? Is it a creature or a thing outside thine own creation?" She continues: "Can you see an enemy, except you first formulate this enemy and then look upon the object of your own conception? What is it that harms you? Can height, or depth, or any other creature separate you from the Love that is omnipresent good,—that blesses infinitely one and all?" ^{Mis., p. 8;}

By accepting mortal mind's erroneous claim that evil is a person, a place, or a thing we become a partner of the very devil we would depose. Whatever we have in our experience results from what we ourselves accept and act upon. Had our Master personalized the hatred of his persecutors, the animal magnetism that nailed him to the cross, he would never have risen from the grave. Instead, he said, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." ^{Luke 23:34;}

He realized that the world's opposition to him was not personal but only the darkness of ignorant beliefs, which could not destroy the light of Truth in his consciousness. His thought was not distracted from the truth that man is God's image and likeness, hence, perfect; so, regardless of the claim, whether it was one of a sinning, hateful mortal or of a sick mortal, it could not cloud his clear and Christly understanding or impede his mission.

Evil can be eliminated from experience only when its illusive and mesmeric nature is seen and rejected and replaced by the truth of being. As one refuses to entertain thoughts of reprisal, revenge, and other false states of mind, and is willing to turn the situation over completely to the governing Principle of the universe and man, he brings himself under the control of this infinite Principle. Omnipresent Truth, the only real power, adjusts all circumstances in a more effective manner than any human being could ever outline.

All forms of evil are denials of the great truth that God is infinite, omnipresent Love. The only seeming power evil ever has is a supposition and is in proportion to one's belief in it. If one is to counteract or avoid error's attacks, he must deny evil's existence and firmly establish a spiritual sense of Love as the infinite and universal reality.

If we are believing that we have enemies, we are believing in the reality of evil. As we see through the suggestion that we have enemies and realize that the activity of Truth and Love is governing all real consciousness, we are able to prove the worth of Mrs. Eddy's statement in the article already referred to: "'Love thine enemies' is identical with 'Thou hast no enemies.'" ^{Mis., p. 9.}