Viewed from the outside, one of the seemingly hard teachings of Christian Science is that respecting love. Until we begin to have an understanding of the height and depth and breadth of universal Love, it seems to us cold and abstract to say that there is but one Love for all mankind. We have been so used to the thought of love as something which we might bestow or withhold at our will, and the fact that Love is one, and that no one can appropriate a part to the exclusion of his neighbor, — these seem to us new and startling ideas.
Joy certainly is the fruit of Love and it is man's birthright, but we do not find our highest joy in appropriation, since appropriation so frequently is selfish: and selfishness never yet brought joy to any mortal, whatever we in our blindness may think about it. Love is infinite, and its manifestation is infinite. There can be no stint or hoarding of infinity. Each individual has his own place in the universe, and surely no one of us can lack while universal Love is being radiated, nor can we make ourselves richer or happier by limiting ourselves or limiting our neighbor. Does a star shine less brightly because his brother, too. is reflecting rays from the sun? Could one have more sunlight by trying to store up certain rays lest he might lose them, and lest, perhaps, the next star might absorb some of them?
The sun is always shining, and its light and warmth are enough for every star in the universe. So, too, there is love enough for all God's children, in spite of our mortal efforts to belittle it by a false sense of happiness. We think our joy consists in limitation. We set something apart, and say, "You shall love me better than you love another; therein consists my joy." But in that very demand lurk selfishness and jealousy and suspicion, the seeds of mortal unrest and unhappiness. Love, in its greatness, does not know any of them; it just goes on shining for us all. If we are thirsting for Love, and ask and receive not, it is not because Love is absent, but because we have let these seeds grow into obstructions to our joy. We are destroying our happiness in our efforts to obtain it. If jealousy makes us wish to block the flow of Love into our neighbor's channel, it may not affect him, but it will certainly affect us. While we limit Love, we know only limitation and sorrow. When we begin to understand that Love is limitless and universal, and that we as well as our neighbor are part of the universe, we begin for the first time to know what joy means.
