Personal or Impersonal Love, Which? LILLIAN BARKER DURKEE          Mankind has for ages been admonished by proverb and precept of the importance of loving one’s neighbor. This admonition has been variously phrased; but it was through Moses that God gave it first to the children of Israel as a law, in the words, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Jesus, many centuries later, emphasized its importance by giving it second place in his reply to the lawyer’s query as to which was the greatest commandment. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the early Christians at Rome, after enumerating various laws and duties, concludes with these words: “And if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Again, when writing to the Galatians, he declares, “All the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” James, who calls himself a “servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,” in his epistle to “the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad,” designates these words as “the royal law.” Twenty centuries later, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, declared in the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” (p. 88), “To love one’s neighbor as one’s self, is a divine idea.”          As we delve deeper into the Science of being, and, reflecting divine knowledge and intelligence, come to know and see the real spiritual man, we recognize that it would be impossible for us to have any feeling but love for God’s ideal man. It is necessary, however, that before we can see or know other individuals aright, we must first learn to see ourselves at least in a degree as God sees us. We must refuse to identify ourselves with human belief. We sometimes seem to be unconscious of man’s true identity; and like a person who is, according to belief, mentally deranged, and fancies himself to be some other person, so we claim to be that which we are not. If we have any doubt on the subject as to who we are, we should satisfy ourselves at the earliest possible moment, and begin to recognize our spiritual identity. We cannot realize that our real neighbor is a spiritual idea, unless we have begun to attain to that realization for ourselves.          Our Leader says in Science and Health (pp. 476, 477): “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick.” But the Master had first to behold himself aright as the Son of God before the perfect man could appear to him. It is necessary for us, also, to begin to gain the right concept of ourselves — the true self, the ideal self, disrobed of false beliefs — before we can know how to love our neighbor as ourself. If we are attempting to love our own mortal sense of self, associated with its beliefs of material pains and pleasures, sensuality or sin, then to love our neighbor as we love this so-called self, with which we are seeming to identify ourselves, would be to disobey another law of the Mosaic Decalogue by bearing false witness against our neighbor, who, in truth, possesses none of these qualities, but is the perfect child of God. But when, through spiritual understanding, we begin to discern man’s true nature, and are able to express in our daily experience something of this perfect idea of God, we are then ready to commence loving the neighbor aright as another individual idea of the one Mind; and this love extends to all ideas which we behold in the mirror of divine Science.          Love itself has always existed; for “God is love,” as the Scriptures tell us. A study of the earlier history of the race, as recorded in the Old Testament, reveals here and there the rays of divine Love penetrating the mists of materialism, and reaching the hearts of the people through the inspired vision of prophet and seer. These rays of spiritual light and love increased in brightness and frequency with the passing of the ages, and finally found their focus in Christ Jesus, — “the light of the world,” the messenger of divine Love. After bidding his followers love their neighbor as themselves, and practicing his own precepts, our Master ultimately made the supreme demonstration of his love for mankind by rising above the belief of death; and that love has radiated through all the succeeding generations to the uttermost parts of the earth.          When Mrs. Eddy received the divine commission to awaken the thought of the world to a more spiritual interpretation of the import of the Master’s words and works, and to the possibility of the repetition of the Christ-healing for suffering humanity, she also directed thought to the necessity of love, — love for God and love for man. Christian Science is the gospel of Love. Love is the divine Principle, the originator of spiritual law. The rules of right thinking, right acting, and right living all emanate from one source — divine Love. Love is the basis of all Christian Science healing. The Apostle Paul recognized this when he wrote to the Corinthians, “Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity [love], I am nothing.” Likewise, a knowledge of the letter of our Way-shower’s teachings, or of our textbook, is worthless unless animated by the spirit of Love. Love cannot be separated from Truth in the practice of the Christ-healing.          Thus it is that the very language of Christian Science is so permeated with expressions of love that a careless or thoughtless use of the term is sometimes the source of a misunderstanding upon the part of the new student, accustomed, in his human way of thinking, to associate it exclusively with the counterfeit emotion which so-called mortal mind has labeled “love.” Joyously grateful for the healing that has come, perhaps at the very outset of his journey from sense to Soul, and untrained as yet in the Science of distinguishing the real from the counterfeit, the spiritual sense of Love from the material, personal sense, the young student may cling to his helper with an emotional personal love, which will, if persisted in, prove a hindrance not only to himself, but to the one upon whom he lavishes this mistaken sense of love. The helper himself may be, to a great extent, responsible for this condition of thought. Spiritual power is reflected and demonstrated only when we have dug out of our thoughts, root and all, the worthless weeds of self-love, pride of personal influence, and the desire for the adoration of our patients, and allow the buds of spiritual love for all mankind, including our patients, to unfold in consciousness. It is so-called mortal mind, not the spiritual idea, that is gratified, that revels in a sense of pride and pleasure, when error’s subtle flattery finds a voice through some infant in Christian Science who endeavors to express his love and gratitude in gushing terms of personal love; and it is mortal mind that suggests, as an excuse for permitting this unscientific admiration and adulation, the alibi: I cannot help it if my patients love me personally. I have done so much for them, it is perfectly natural that they should!          First beholding ourselves aright, and realizing that we are not the possessors of any personal perfection; that good did not originate in us or in mortal mind, but in the one divine Mind, we then are able to obey the command to love the neighbor — the patient — as ourselves, with an impersonal, spiritual sense of love, which is the only love that heals scientifically. Therefore, patiently and lovingly will the alert practitioner untwine the clinging thoughts of personal adulation, and point out to the partially awakened student the path that leads away from human personality to the infinite Person, God; will teach him that his gratitude, love, and adoration belong first of all to God. If necessary, he may rebuke the error as did Jesus, the master Metaphysician, when he insisted that God alone is good. He will then gently but firmly remind the student that the first of the Commandments is that we shall have but the one God, and that spiritual understanding and obedience to the First Commandment prepares thought for the correct interpretation and practice of what the Master declared to be like unto it, and secondary to it only, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”          The offender in the blind worship of mere human personality is by no means always the beginner; older Scientists are sometimes mesmerized by the subtle wiles of the serpent, mortal mind, in its attempts to lead them into the exaltation of the personality of practitioner, teacher, church officer, or even of our Leader herself. There is a great lesson for all of us in Mrs. Eddy’s quick, stern rebuke whenever she detected a note of personal adoration in the psalms of gratitude sung by her followers and students; for her finely attuned spiritual sense recognized it as a discordant note, bound to disturb the perfect harmony if allowed to continue. She realized the subtlety of this form of animal magnetism, and warns us time and time again to be on guard against it.          How naturally and joyously we turn from the right comprehension and demonstration of the First Commandment to the inevitable second, “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” when we have learned in the spiritual interpretation of our Lord’s Prayer, as given on page 17 of Science and Health, that “Love is reflected in love,” and thus perceive that the only love that is real, the only love that is pure, the only love that is unselfish, the only love that a Christian Scientist can afford to indulge in, is that love which reflects the Love that is God.          When the bugle-call to duty, “Loose him, and let him go,” ringing down the centuries from that faraway tomb of Lazarus, shall have finally penetrated the dull ears of selfishness — self-love — we shall all relinquish the hindering hold, detach love from the personality of self, practitioner, teacher, relative, friend, and leave them unhampered in the glorious labor God has appointed them to perform; namely, the extermination of suffering, sensuality, sin, and death. Until we do this, we are disobedient to the law of Love, which requires us to love our neighbor as ourself.   "Personal or Impersonal Love, Which?" by Lillian Barker Durkee The Christian Science Journal, August 1924

 

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