We read in the Gospels that when Jesus was asked the question, "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" he answered: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." In Deuteronomy this "first and great commandment" from the old Mosaic law is stated very similarly. Clearly, Jesus was not endeavoring to belittle the command of the Mosaic law; rather was he emphasizing and revitalizing it. Without departing from it, he was giving it new emphasis as the test of true loyalty to God, the Father, by coupling it very intimately with love for one's fellowman.
Doubtless the Jews needed this revitalizing of their sense of supreme duty. He who had asked the Master the question was a Pharisee and a lawyer. The Pharisees were rigid religionists, whose chief characteristic consisted largely of conformity to ritual, while the essence of true spiritual culture and broad social obligation was greatly lacking. Their worship was largely what might be termed "formalism," a certain rigid conformity to rules and observances. To them, God may have seemed a Jewish God rather than a universal and impartial God with no favorites. In their hearts they could have known and felt little of that broad love for their fellow-men which reflects without distinction God's own love for all His children. And so we may believe the Master closely associated duty to one's fellows with one's supreme duty to God. "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets," he said.
To the conscientious student of Christian Science these words of the Master come with peculiar import and force, because we are taught in the textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder and Leader of the Christian Science movement, that we are loving God supremely only as in our daily lives we are wholly reflecting divine Love. To reflect the love of God is literally to love's one neighbor as one's self. He who has this love of God in his heart is constantly endeavoring to square his action with the Master's two great commandments.
