The thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians clearly describes charity, a fundamental essential of every Christlike life, and enumerates some of the attributes by which this virtue is expressed in our daily lives. Since the word here translated "charity" means "love," it is love that never fails us. We may "speak with the tongues of men and of angels"; our faith may be boundless and our generosity limitless; we may even make great sacrifices, but if we lack love, the apostle tells us, we are nothing.
This doctrine of love for our fellow men is emphasized in all the teachings of our Way-shower, Christ Jesus, and is fundamental in Christianity. In the Christian Science textbook, our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, writes, "The good you do and embody gives you the only power obtainable;" and, "Whatever holds human thought in line with unselfed love, receives directly the divine power" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 192). Thus truth and love are always closely linked. Truth without love, or love without truth, would be impossible—neither scientific nor Christian.
It may not always seem easy to combine truth and love. Often the emphasis placed upon the demonstration of the truth of being may apparently be lacking in loving sympathy for those who are suffering by reason of the erroneous testimony of the material senses. Students of Christian Science know that sin, sickness— all inharmony—are nonexistent in God's universe, the universe in which we have our true existence;and yet to the physical senses of those suffering from them they seem very real. Therefore such sufferers, to whom knowledge of the truth of being has not yet brought release from the bondage of physical sense testimony, should receive the utmost love and compassion. While we hold our own consciousness steadfastly to the truth as taught by Christian Science, that "harmony is universal, and discord is unreal" (Science and Health, p. 414), there should never be withheld an expression of sympathetic understanding and love for those still apparently under the thralldom of material sense.
