ABOVE my desk hangs the familiar picture of Daniel in the den of lions. This one is unframed, a small print mounted upon a piece of cardboard; and below the picture is written, "A Man Greatly Beloved." It was sent me many years ago by one who had just begun the study of Christian Science. At that time she was a stranger in a great city, with a very meager salary. "This is the season of giving," she wrote, "and I will not be cheated of its joy by any false sense of lack. It will not matter to you that this little gift cost only seventeen cents: you will know what goes with it. I am trying to know with Daniel that God loves me." She knew she would be understood; but she could not know how many times in the years that have passed since then the memory of her high-hearted courage and generous faith has come back to me like a trumpet call; nor how many times the little phrase written upon her gift has taught anew its solemn and beautiful lesson.
When we come to see, through Christian Science, what the true character of God is, it is comparatively easy for us to see why we should love Him; but it is not always easy to realize that God loves us. Especially is this true of that large number whose early teaching pictured Him as a stern and vengeful judge, swift to punish all human frailty. Usually we have turned away from this concept of God before coming to Christian Science; but early impressions are very tenacious, and we are sometimes dismayed to discover that quite unconsciously we are being governed by the old false concept, saying with our lips that God is Love, and proclaiming with our actions that we are unhappy and afraid.
"All nature teaches God's love to man," says Mrs. Eddy on page 326 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." "Herein is love," cries the beloved disciple, "not that we loved God, but that he loved us. . . . We love him, because he first loved us." God is Love; we say it over and over again, this beautiful word that human sense esteems too good to be true. We yearn for its comforting reassurance; and yet, too often, we are afraid to take God at His word. We fail to realize how essential this fact is to all true demonstration, this "sweet and certain sense that God is Love" (Science and Health, p. 569). All through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, this thought runs like a golden thread, binding all its wealth of spiritual experience into one harmonious design. Moses saw it when he declared, "The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." Jeremiah caught a glimpse of it in his stormy and troubled life when he declared, "The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee." Isaiah carried on the high refrain, "He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young." But nowhere in the Old Testament does its practical efficacy appear more clearly than in the career of Daniel.
