In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes (p. 451), "If our hopes and affections are spiritual, they come from above, not from beneath, and they bear as of old the fruits of the Spirit." Affections that are from above, being spiritual, emanate from a divine source, from an affectionate Father-Mother God, the origin of all being and its qualities. Nothing short of the affections that proceed from this deific source are real affections.
Man, as the offspring of Spirit, possesses these affections as Spirit's reflection. They are native to his being. They appear in his nature as inevitably as beauty and fragrance appear in the flower. They are as inseparable from his being as they are from their divine source. Without them man would cease to be man, just as without its form and beauty the rose would lose its identity as a rose. Pure affection, therefore, is not something that can be put off and on, or that man can lose. It is inconceivable that man can lose a single attribute derived from Deity. His unalterable completeness from the beginning can suffer no loss through subtraction of error, but is sustained by Truth's eternal laws.
This pure affection that emanates from above appears in human experience as that unselfed spiritual love which cannot be circumscribed, but embraces all mankind in its amplitude. It is the antipode of the emotionalism that condemns enemies and loves friends. It is not partial but just, not cruel but merciful, not capricious but constant.
