I Was working part time at a television station and vying with another person for a particular job. I'd been called to this assignment on the day in question, only to find that this other person was there ahead of me, doing what I, not he, had been called to do. He'd come in early, knowing there was a need. He got there first, even though he hadn't been called.

Under the circumstances, rather than complain, it seemed more proper that I leave, which I did.

While walking back through the city streets to my apartment, feeling a load of hostility, personal animosity, and, frankly, hatred, I realized, being a new but ardent student of Christian Science, that the more I hated, the more I was suffering over the incident.

I remember making a conscious effort to love this person, in whatever way I could. I knew that loving him was the way out of my predicament because love is the antidote to hatred. It also has God's power behind it. As the Bible tells us in First John, "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him" (4:16). Not yet having attained a very deep grasp of how to apply the teachings of Christian Science, I prayed to see him as God's expression, or idea, and I rejected the suggestion that he was a selfish mortal who had deprived me of work.

Suddenly I was loving, where moments before I was not. And it seemed as if all the beneficence of God was pouring down on me, all around me, there on that city sidewalk. And I became almost transported! My feet seemed to leave the pavement. I look back now and see myself looking upward, filled with gratitude for what had suddenly happened in my consciousness, my experience.

I had instantly, totally forgiven this person for the wrong he had not really done, but that I thought he had. And I was receiving God's largess of love.

Sometimes forgiveness doesn't come so quickly. Often we cling to the satisfaction we seem to get out of holding on to the belief that somebody else is a scoundrel. He's hurt us so; he's not worthy of our forgiveness; look at what he's done! We want him to suffer for it. But as I learned from this experience, it's the one who refuses to forgive who is usually in pain.

Christ Jesus apparently considered forgiving the basis of prayer. In Mark's Gospel we read, "When ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses" (11:25). And in Matthew's version of the Lord's Prayer, the prayer Jesus taught his followers, are the words "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (6:12).

Love for one another is the very bedrock of Christianity and fundamental to a life of harmony. At the heart of this love is more than a dutiful desire to do the right thing—although that approach may help us at various times. A deeper reason to forgive is that God is All-in-all.

Mrs". Eddy says in Science and Health, "The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind,—that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle" (p. 275).

If God is Love and also All, and man exists in this allness, man's being must be composed of the qualities of Love and of nothing else. Man, in every case, must be the spiritual likeness of God. This spiritual nature is our true being as God's ideas, or offspring. As we recognize this to be true of ourselves and others, we begin to look for God's qualities even in those who have wronged us. To the degree that we succeed, we are more able to love these individuals instead of hating them. In this way we are following in Christ Jesus' footsteps. Our job, as the expression of God, is to acknowledge His allness everywhere.

What does this do for the person who succeeds in working through an inability to forgive and in forging a God-inspired attitude of actual forgiveness? My own experience of forgiving the colleague sheds some light on this.

The incident made me want to explore Christian Science more avidly, to find out more fully the power of love and forgiveness, and to understand better God's laws. Shortly thereafter, I was called to a more permanent, far better situation, a marvelous work assignment, where I remained for many years.

The incident I've related may make it seem as if forgiving is always easy to do. As we know, it isn't. But Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health: "Evil has no reality. It is neither person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion of material sense" (p. 71). So it comes down to the fact that any error about another, or about us—in fact, any reason for not forgiving—is illusion, unreality. That might seem like ignoring what seems real. But what seems real to the material senses does not define what reality is. Reality simply, finally, is God and His allness. It's the perception of Truth that we get through the study of Christian Science and through the teachings of Jesus, that evil is not true about man, is unreal, not a part of the spiritual reality. God's law corrects all that departs from good. It's a law we can trust.

This spiritual understanding, which reflects God, allows us to forgive. It's the reason why we are able to forgive anything.