Christian Science lays very great emphasis upon individual redemption as being essential to human uplift. First, last, and always its appeal to the student is insistent that the making of a righteous race can be effected only by the making of righteous men. If one would have the world saved he must look to it that he is saved himself, and these ideas are logically linked in the two great commandments which sum up the law and the prophets, and which can never be divorced in their fulfillment.
The radiation of good always and necessarily attends the realization of good. In working out his own problem in Christian Science one can and does contribute in a very definite way to the betterment of his every brother man; and that professed Christianity has come so far short of demonstrating this divine order may be said to be one of the saddest things of religious history. Mrs. Eddy saw that to-day men would be no less certainly impressed and won by the Christianity of Christ Jesus than they were nineteen centuries ago. She saw that a scientific faith must be and is practical, and she proceeded to prove it. She saw that individual triumph over sickness and sin, and the loving of one's neighbor as one's self—that these two together, and these alone, can meet the demands of the human situation.
Now selfishness has always tempted even the well meaning to leave the question, "How shall I love my neighbor as I love myself?" practically unanswered. We have thought that it is possible to love and minister to all who are approachable and appreciative, who believe in us and are willing at least to listen to our teachings; but the multitude of those whom we regard as not of our class, who we imagine do not understand us, and who certainly seem to want none of our religion—how can we love these as we love ourselves, and prove it to them? This, for the many, has remained an ubiquitous query. To it Christian Science brings the answer of him who defined brotherly love as all-inclusive, and with whom being good meant distinctly doing good as well as thinking good. Even our enemies, he said, were to be loved and ministered to; and this was to be the test of Christian genuineness, of worthiness to be his disciples.
