Love ELLA W. HOAG, CSD          In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 249) Mrs. Eddy, our beloved Leader, in writing of "Love" says: "What a word! I am in awe before it. Over what worlds on worlds it hath range and is sovereign! the underived, the incomparable, the infinite All of good, the alone God, is Love." Where such as she stands in awe, it would almost seem as though lesser mortals would hesitate even to approach. And yet how every heart is reaching out to understand Love! How all are really longing to come into its wonderful secret and receive its longed-for blessing!          When Christian Science first touches our lives this understanding appears to be fairly within our grasp, and we begin to talk of it as though its fullness were already attained. Then the test comes! An opportunity to heal instantaneously some inveterate disease is presented. But alas! the healing does not always result. Then we begin to see something of what Mrs. Eddy meant when she said (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 312), "Oh, may the love that is talked, be felt! and so lived, that when weighed in the scale of God we be not found wanting."          At this point in our spiritual progress, unless we are on guard, we shall not only be tempted to swing to the other extreme and declare vehemently that we will do no more talking on so infinite a theme, but we shall also be apt to condemn anyone who even mentions the name, Love. To be sure, talking without living would always be worse than useless, but our difficulty is that in our zeal without knowledge we have been betrayed into taking the end for the beginning. We have reached for the ultimate and have failed to see the first steps just before us. Never for a moment can we wisely separate ourselves from our search for the understanding of the love which reflects divine Love, God; this, however, can only be found by the humility which sees that real love can never be learned except through the simplest of life's lessons. Half our difficulties dissolve when we accept the fact that the least expression of loving-kindness has in it more of Truth than all the high sounding words which were ever put together.          Loving-kindness invariably blesses all. We need never fear that it will cover evil. On the contrary, it is the light which of necessity brings everything unlike it out from under cover. A certain state of mortal thought sometimes imagines that loving-kindness may do harm, that to speak a kindly word to one who is known to have erred may in some way compromise one's own loyalty to Principle. Strange, is it not, that one should imagine thus? when Principle is Love itself, that Love which Jesus tells us "is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil." Is it not liable to be the claim of self-righteousness which would betray one into refusing a friendly handclasp to a brother, however mistakenly that brother may have been thinking? which would draw its garments about it and pass by, in the name of Principle it may be, but surely without its spirit?          A cold look is an easy thing for a mortal to encompass, but the compassion of the Master, the loving-kindness which can feel love as well as speak it, under all circumstances, — surely this could never harm, could never fail to bless. God has not made us either the judge or the one to inflict punishment upon our brother. Then why should we ever lend our thought for a moment to anything less than loving-kindness? The mental attitude of loving-kindness is never a condoning of error; neither is it in any way a weakness. Indeed it takes great strength and moral courage to hold our thinking in such love that we can greet all at all times with an unchanging beneficence, an unvarying kindliness. That someone may condemn us for our kindliness or judge us falsely because of it, is no reason why we should allow our thought to be even temporarily forced into hard or cruel channels.          Then let us ever remember the tender counsel given by our Leader in her poem entitled "Love" (Poems, p. 6): — If thou the bending reed wouldst break          By thought or word unkind, Pray that his spirit you partake,          Who loved and healed mankind: Seek holy thoughts and heavenly strain, That make men one in love remain.   "Love" by Ella W. Hoag, CSD Christian Science Sentinel, February 25, 1922

 

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