Oh, may the love that is talked, be felt! and so lived that when weighed in the scales of God we be not found wanting. Love is consistent, uniform, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, unutterably kind; even that which lays all upon the altar, and, speechless and alone, bears all burdens, suffers all inflictions, endures all piercing for you and for the Kingdom of Heaven" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 312).
Perhaps nowhere in Mrs. Eddy's writings could be found a more beautiful exposition of that love to which Jesus so often referred, saying: "Love one another," and to which his own life bears everlasting testimony. Love is the fulfilling of the law, and through our study of the Science of Being, we have the blessed privilege of learning Love, and of learning how to love; how to separate the wheat of thought from the tares of mortal sense, gathering the wheat into our consciousness, there to abide for eternity.
How shall one learn Love? the heart asks. How shall one learn to bear good-will toward all men, to be ever good-natured, in the sense of being in the nature of good—God? How shall one learn to prefer being lovely to being loved? How shall one learn the love which is neither embittered by inconstancy and inappreciation, nor enslaved by fears and sympathies; majestic and immutable in storm, and buoyant with joy and inspiration in sunshine? How shall one learn that love which is broader and deeper and more sublime than mere affection? that far-seeing love, which can close its ears to the appeals of the clinging nestling, and with steady purpose shove the bird from its warm nest that it may learn to fly? How shall one learn the love which in patience can behold its struggles, and in meekness bear its resentment, abiding the time when on steady wing it soars into freedom and into gratitude? How? how? is the cry of the hungry heart.
