Gentleness is a grace of God, revealing His divine nature. It reaches the heart and brings comfort and healing. It provides the spiritual atmosphere where mundane work can take on new meaning. With it discontent and condemnation are put to silence. In its presence patience comes to the overburdened. The Psalmist, in a psalm of thanksgiving, sang, "Thy gentleness hath made me great." ^{Ps. 18:35.}

The world in its spiritual hunger is reaching out for "the happy grace of gentleness," ^{Christian Science Hymnal, No. 243.} as a hymn describes it. A young child in school was asked to write what love meant to her. In simple words she told how nice it was when her grandmother washed her face "so smoothly." Gentleness had reached the child's heart in this simple task.

In the gentle falling of rain refreshing the earth, in the steady, effortless rising of the sun, in the resistless opening of leaflet and bud into full bloom, we can catch glimpses of what God's love for His creation must be like. These reveal in some degree the power of spiritual unfoldment as seen through Christian Science.

One day while I was praying for inner stillness, the last lines of the hymn mentioned earlier kept coming to me: "Self-love and harshness disappear / Beneath its tender, healing power." As this message kept persistently repeating itself, I searched my thought but couldn't find where I had been critical or harsh with my fellowman. Then I learned that one of the meanings of the word "harsh" is "exacting" and realized that I was harsh and exacting in what I was demanding of myself. I was trying to be a good mortal, separate from Deity, moving in an orbit of my own; whereas Christian Science reveals man as spiritual idea, expressing God's ongoing creation.

This awakening also brought to light self-love and helped me to overcome it, dispelling a personal, material sense that would interfere with the development of the divine idea. Self-love claims that Christian Science can be understood through the physical senses and human intellect alone. This subtle suggestion of intellectual pride would deceptively influence us into thinking that goodness is our own or another's personal, private possession instead of the expression of God, good.

Christianity, as exemplified by Christ Jesus, the master Christian, is inseparable from the practice of Christian Science. His Sermon on the Mount assures mankind that our sense of ourselves and others can be stripped of its mortal beliefs until true humanhood is seen as the coincidence of the human with the divine. The spirit of the Christ does not identify the human being with the harsh, mortal concept of man. It does, in fact, enable us to discern man as God's idea, forever rejoicing in infinite perfection. This recognition of divine reality is the saving light of Christ, Truth. And in Science and Health Mrs. Eddy describes Christ as "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error." ^{Science and Health, p. 583.}

Spiritual growth and development occur through our own individual identification with the divine Principle of man's being. No effort to force the demonstration of spiritual good beyond what we now understand—or merely to store up what we learn for future use—can be equal to the present power of Christ.

God, Spirit, is demanding of us only what can be proved right at the point of our present spiritual understanding. It is this realization that brings us joy in meeting daily challenges and using the truth we know, however simple.

True wisdom, gained from divine Love and put into practice, brings us patience and compassion for all mankind. Let us be gentle with ourselves and others and enjoy our journey "from sense to Soul." ^{See Hymnal, No. 64.} ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hill shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Isaiah 55:12