In a little book by Professor Drummond we read: "Every one has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of the modern world: What is the summum bonum—the supreme good? You have life before you. Once only you can live it. What is the noblest object of desire, the supreme gift to covet?" He then goes on to speak of faith and the need of possessing it, and quotes from Paul, "If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing" (Rev. Ver.); to which he adds Paul's striking climax: "Now abideth faith, hope, love, . . . but the greatest of these is love." Professor Drummond therefore called his book "The Greatest Thing in the World," and so beautiful is it, and so unanswerable, that Mrs. Eddy once said she had intended to write such a book herself, but Professor Drummond had done it so well that he had saved her the effort.
Professor Drummond reminds us that Peter says, "Above all things have fervent love among yourselves," and that John goes even farther in his declaration that "God is love." Love being the greatest thing in the world, it should and does demand our attention. What greater need is there than that we should contemplate it, desire it, and possess it? Love is the potent factor in all good. We may safely say that the work which Scientists do for humanity, the work which tells, the work which brings about demonstration, is inspired by this wonderful love, the greatest thing in the world. When love for humanity takes possession of the heart, it dominates every other affection and desire, unless we except the love for God which is so akin to it. This love for our fellows manifests itself in a constant effort to benefit mankind. Throughout the ages men and women have abandoned the home life, with its beautiful conditions and accompaniments, and devoted themselves unselfishly to the amelioration of sorrow, sickness, sin, and death itself. All this has been done without the knowledge of Christian Science, without the understanding which alone can utterly destroy these enemies of the happiness of man.
This love, the reflection of the Love which we call God, good, is ever impelling us to greater effort, and we cannot afford to ignore His call to a higher life, since only by the measure of the love we entertain in our hearts can we be assured that we are reflecting the divine. "Love is impartial and universal" (Science and Health, p. 13); and is our rock, our bulwark, and our defense. It is also the energy which moves creation; it is the fountain of effort; it is the essence of all true power. It is inexorable in demands which can be answered only by itself. The sooner we become at-one with it, banishing from consciousness everything unlike God, good, the sooner we become allied with the motive power of the universe.
