THE Sermon on the Mount includes commands which must eventually be obeyed by every individual. Speaking as the messenger of God, Jesus voices with impressive simplicity the divine command, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." The command is without qualification or exception. And wherefore should we thus love? The reason follows the command, "That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven." It is as though the Master had said: Would ye be God's children? Then learn to love even those who appear to hate, persecute, and curse you. Thus must you prove that you are the children of God. There the command stands, imperative, final, day after day, year after year, century upon century, outreaching time and touching eternity. When shall we learn so to love?
Jesus gave no command which it is impossible to obey. Our ability is of God, not of man. To love those who hate or persecute us we need but to relinquish our belief that manhood—our own or our brother's—is formed of faults and frailties, and become conscious, through spiritual sense, that, regardless of what matter claims, real manhood is always the individualized expression of the one Life, or Mind, called God. The infinite Ego is never expressed by unloving, hateful, human personalities, but always by loving, lovable, like-God individualities. Since the presence of God is evidenced only by these individual expressions of Him, we can be conscious of Deity's presence only as we are conscious of the individual ideas that are the evidence and proof of His presence.
Human concepts are classified as animate and inanimate, organic and inorganic. An animated form of evil designated an unkind, hateful, mortal personality may seem more alive and actual to the material senses than inanimate forms of evil. But that is only a seem-so. Both are equally false. Both must be reduced to nothingness. By what method?
