Perhaps the first and greatest need of a Christian Scientist is for the realization of a true sense of universal love and its correlative expression, universal giving. This broad, impartial sense of love, always giving just for the joy of giving, the joy of expressing Principle, can only come to us as we begin to apprehend God as Love, and know that the real man in His likeness expresses only the true sense of loving. How impossible this task appeared to the writer before she became a student of Christian Science is recalled when she remembers that her concept of love, though sincere, was limited, personal, and quickly antagonized, causing much reserve, coldness, and indifference. When, however, the understanding of Love as infinite began to dawn on her thought, then came the wonderful uplift and unfoldment which takes place in consciousness through this teaching, showing personal love and personal hate to be illusions, and leaving the fact of the one great Love and its infinite manifestations to be expressed. Thus the activity of Truth ever separates the material illusion from the spiritual fact, leaving thereby only God's idea to be known and obeyed. The very nature of this work of separating the tares from the wheat supplies us with limitless opportunities to prove and to practice what we understand of the teachings of Christian Science and to make each opportunity a stepping-stone to go up higher.
In her ''Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 176) our Leader says: "But what of ourselves, and our times and obligations? Are we duly aware of our own great opportunities and responsibilities? Are we prepared to meet and improve them, to act up to the acme of divine energy wherewith we are armored?" The inspiration that would cause us "to act up to the acme of divine energy" must indeed be selfless love and sincerity, and these qualities of character can only be maintained by a steadfast and unremitting censorship of our thinking. No torpid, morbid, or lethargic state of thought must be allowed to mesmerize us into weak or uncertain action or procrastination; but joyous, spontaneous, vigorous, accurate thinking must characterize our daily living, and so prove that the divine impulsion or quickening spiritual idea is the expulsion of all error and weakness. Here one may say, "I wish I had a more positive thought and could throw off this sense of weakness and lethargy which seems to prevent any definite mental work." And the answer must ever be: True thinking is always positive and vigorous; only false belief and illusion can lead you to believe in a human mind called your own that suggests the lack of the attributes and qualities which belong to God's child, His image and likeness.
The opportunity is ever at hand to express loving-kindness in countless ways in our everyday living. Gentleness, tenderness, patience, watchfulness, watching for another's need, controlling impatience, overcoming desire for self-praise, or jealousy of another's success, all knock at the door of consciousness, seeking for the yea or nay with which we must respond. The positive right thought ever carries with it the affirmation of the "I am" or spiritual fact it declares; whereas the negative belief is made up only of the supposition of the absence of, and the denial of, the positive. Can we wonder, then, that true thinking invigorates, strengthens, and refreshes, while morbid or desultory speculation conveys weakness, discouragement, and depression? Love's demand and command to us is to awaken to the real facts of being, and express perfection in the image and likeness of our creator: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
