"Spiritual living and blessedness are the only evidences, by which we can recognize true existence and feel the unspeakable peace which comes from an all-absorbing spiritual love." Thus does the revered and loved Leader of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, express, on page 264 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," her profound conviction that there is no way to experience an abundant joy of life, a genuine contentment, an "unspeakable peace" except through an exclusive and wholehearted love for the realities of Spirit—even a spiritual love that is all-absorbing!
Spirit is God, and God is infinite Mind; therefore Spirit is always expressed through divine ideas, never by means of matter or through the physical senses. To love Spirit supremely is to love right ideas such as kindness, gentleness, tenderness, unselfishness, honesty, purity, whether they are manifested by others or by oneself. Spirit, God, is known and understood only through Godlike ideas; and, as man is the full reflection of God, the ideal man can likewise be known and loved as the idea of Spirit, and in no other way. When we are making the separation in our own thought between the false and the true, and affirming and realizing that strength and nobility of character, uprightness, humility, and lovableness—divine idealism, spiritual perfection—are the sole reality of our fellow men, as well as of ourselves, we are truly loving our neighbor as ourselves.
To love God supremely means simply to love good supremely, and nothing is more natural or normal than that. Who or what else is there to love? No man can love evil. Who can love discord? The great mistake of mortals is to believe that good can be found through unspiritual means and ways; that through indulgence in selfishness, sensuality, cruelty, dishonesty, these errors can in some way bring something good to themselves or others. Blind materialism may claim that good can come from evil, but enlightened understanding is aware that such a thing is utterly impossible.
