BY IRA W. PACKARD, from the July 1900 issue of The Christian Science Journal
As we progress in Christian Science, all of us find out the truth of the words in our text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," that "the vital part, the heart and soul of Christian Science is Love."
When I was a youth I joined the Presbyterian Church, and tried to lead a Christian life. I read the Bible through a number of times, and memorized the whole of the New Testament; but the prominence given to love never attracted my attention. It was hardly noticed by me. I can now look back and see that it never impressed me. It was fine talk and sounded well; but the vital necessity of love was totally unappreciated. The command to observe the Sabbath seemed of far more importance.
Until Christian Science awakened me out of this lethargy and ignorance, I never saw that love was the key-note of the teaching of Jesus and of his disciples. But now, in reading the New Testament, I find love everywhere. The command to love is repeated time and time again. Now why this repeated demand, or command, to love? It is not merely an order from God for us to do something that will please Him. This is the human or theological conception; its real significance is of vastly more importance than this.
Love is commanded because it is the fact of existence, the reality of Being. It is Life, the only Life; therefore if we want Life, eternal Life, we must love; for hate, malice, and resentment are negations, the absence of Love, the absence of Life. "He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." We learn that Love is an eternally divine fact, as well as a command. It is as eternal and imperative as the command always to call three times three, nine. We can never call three times three anything else than nine, and get harmony, a correct answer. If we do call it anything else, we shall never work out our problem; inharmony and failure will be the result. Now we can spend our whole lifetime in tears and prayers to God for a correct answer, for harmony, but we shall never get it until we go back and correct our mistake, and obey God's immutable law. So it is with Love; its demands are just as exacting and obligatory. If we cherish hate, resentment, or even ill-will towards any one, we cannot get our petition for health, harmony, life, answered. We must first correct the mistake. "First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." We cannot break the changeless law of Love and obtain harmony, any more than we can break the law of mathematics and obtain a correct answer. All our petitions and prayers are unavailing till our error is corrected, destroyed.
We read on page 552 of our text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "The great miracle, to human sense, is divine Love. One of the grand necessities of existence is to gain the true idea of what constitutes the Kingdom of Heaven in the affections of man. This can never be reached while we hate our brother." Hence Jesus' command to love our enemies. He said this that we might be saved; we cannot hate and be saved, for hate is the absence of the real, it is darkness, death. "He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." Love is the real, it is Life. "God is Love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." Now change the word "God" in the foregoing for its synonym "Life," and read: Life is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in Life, and Life in him.
There is no life or existence outside of Love; so if we want life, we must love; there is no other way. We are never excused or pardoned for breaking this law of Love, any more than we are for breaking the law of mathematics. No wrong done us, no matter how great, is the least excuse. No one ever had more cause for bitter feeling towards those who wronged him, than did Jesus; yet he loved all, to the end. If he had given place to the least sense of resentment, he would have lost that realization of Love's omnipresence and omnipotence which enabled him to demonstrate the fact that Life is deathless.
"He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes." If we hate, we are in the unreal, in darkness; and this darkness will be fear, and fear will people this darkness with ghosts, "evil spirits," "devils," beliefs of disease. We shall be consumed by our terrors. But, "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment."
Christian Science teaches us how to displace hate, the unreal, with Love that is real. It shows us that the seeming power of hate is the belief that there is pleasure or satisfaction in hating. It uncovers this lie of personal sense, and we cast out or destroy this false belief of pleasure in sin, as we do a belief of pain in matter, through denial of its verity. God never made either. Love is natural, joy-giving, because it is real. Hate is unnatural, discordant, abhorrent. When sin becomes loathsome to us, we cease to indulge in it.
"What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" We must give up all malice and evil thinking for Love if we would live, have Life.
It is recorded that a certain man asked Jesus what he should do that he might inherit eternal life. The answer was, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.... This do, and thou shalt live."
END.
John the Baptist came preaching, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand," and thus he turned men with expectancy to the truth revealed by Christ Jesus, to the golden now as the time in which to experience health, holiness, and heaven. It is surely well for us to realize often the truth so sweetly voiced by Whittier:
Christian Science is not a new theory, but the revival of that divine law established by Jesus during his career on earth, and which was adhered to for three hundred years subsequent thereto; but after that time religion became entangled with politics, and the higher law, which included healing the sick, was excluded from religious worship.
Written by Florence Irene Gubbins