IN "A Rule for Motives and Acts" on page 40 of the Manual of The Mother Church, our beloved Leader, Mrs. Eddy, has given to the students of Christian Science a comprehensive guide for Christian conduct in the words, "In Science, divine Love alone governs man; and a Christian Scientist reflects the sweet amenities of Love, in rebuking sin, in true brotherliness, charitableness, and forgiveness."
We note from the words just quoted that the first step in the reflection of Love is the rebuking of sin. How earnestly do we strive, in our ineffectual human way, to refrain from injuring those we love! Do not we rather try to bless them? That our Leader fully recognized the necessity for this activity we have abundant proof in all her writings. On pages 570 and 571 of our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she says: "Many are willing to open the eyes of the people to the power of good resident in divine Mind, but they are not so willing to point out the evil in human thought, and expose evil's hidden mental ways of accomplishing iniquity. Why this backwardness, since exposure is necessary to ensure the avoidance of the evil? Because people like you better when you tell them their virtues than when you tell them their vices. It requires the spirit of our blessed Master to tell a man his faults, and so risk human displeasure for the sake of doing right and benefiting our race."
Notwithstanding the admonitions left for us, not only in the writings of our dear Leader but in the Bible, and particularly in the words and example of our Way-shower, Christ Jesus, how we may long for some one to do this rebuking for us, that we may not have to bear the cross of misjudged motives, until under the impulsion of the all-embracing, infinite Love we obey. Then, how surely, how quickly, comes the recognition of the fact that in order to rebuke properly we must separate error from our thought of man, that we may see our brother more — as in very truth he is — as God's image and likeness; and with this spiritual illumination there comes the consciousness of "true brotherliness, charitableness, and forgiveness": true brotherliness, because we now see that man is ever perfect; charitableness, because man in God's image is unutterably lovable; forgiveness, because, as Mrs. Eddy tells us, this activity of Truth in the human consciousness so destroys all unlike itself that there is nothing left to be forgiven.
