"MY little children," counseled the disciple whom Jesus loved, "let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth." No other of the apostolic writers, in fact, seems to have so clearly discerned as did John the spirit of what Jesus characterized as the summing up of the law and the prophets, namely, to love God supremely and one's neighbor even as one's self. That supreme declaration, "God is love," coupled with the further statement that "he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins," brings an irresistible conclusion: "If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."
Had the apostle's counsel been heeded down through the ages, the world would not be confronted today with the deplorable conditions everywhere prevalent. All that there is of crime, misery, and distress of every kind, is the product of mankind's inhumanity one to another, and it can be dissipated only through universal obedience to the Christly command that we love one another even as he loved us. Love is the solution to every problem, whether national, communal, or individual, and there can be no lasting peace, but only palliative measures, except on this basis. When there is but one standard of action, the law of God who is Love, for men and nations, then the brotherhood of man will become an actuality, not a theory.
That this is no impossible ideal is being proved daily in Christian Science, which takes as its fundamental premise the declaration that God is Love and epitomizes its teaching in the golden rule, which is neither more nor less than obedience to the great commandment. If we love God above all else, there is no room in our hearts for either envy, malice, or hatred of any one, and these are the provoking causes of all human discord. It was because she had overcome these disturbing elements through allegiance to the one God and obedience to His law, that Mrs. Eddy could write as she did in her Message to The Mother Church for 1902 (p. 2): "To live and let live, without clamor for distinction or recognition; to wait on divine Love; to write truth first on the tablet of one's own heart,—this is the sanity and perfection of living, and my human ideal."
