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.
The serpent of material sense, however, whispers that man is a mortal formed of dust and endowed with sensuous affections. This is a mistaken theory, a false view of true manhood and its qualities. This false sense can no more define the quality of man's affections than it can condition the nature of his being.
The sensualist's affections are a misnomer. They are not affections at all. They take form in sensuality, or infatuation, and are thus from beneath. They are abnormal, unnatural. They are a mockery of the love that is natural to man as the reflection of divine Love. These miscalled affections emanate from the belief of minds or persons many. They never invade the domain of reason or realism, but remain in the fictional realm of supposition and superstition, having no law or force to support them. Being wholly unreal, such affections have no foothold in enlightened human consciousness; they are no part of true humanhood. The deceitful senses in which they originate are both the deceived and the deceiver. But their deceptions can never deceive man, created by God in His likeness. Man is not deceivable. He has no faculty for deception, for he is the image of intelligence and as such is endowed with understanding.
The errors of sense can never alter the nature of man or his qualities. A lie about man can no more change man than a discordant note can change the harmony of music. From the point of view of Principle man has ever remained the likeness of the One who is "altogether lovely." He dwells forever apart from the suggestions of sense, reflecting the legitimate affection of Soul, satisfied with the things of Spirit.
Let us then ask ourselves where our affections are placed. Are they from beneath or from above? That depends upon what we are striving to achieve. Are we striving for wealth, fame, or position, and pursuing the frivolities of material living, or are we approximating the Life divine in denying self, forgiving wrongs, and helping others? Are we trusting in whole or in part to material means for happiness and healing and thus holding ourselves in sin and disease, or are we trusting to spiritual methods that establish us in harmony and health? We cannot serve two masters. Aligning one's thought with evil alienates one's affection from good. An undivided affection for good nullifies faith in evil and forsakes it. Unselfed love for God and man silences the whisperings of the serpent that are ever clamoring for recognition and supremacy.
St. Paul tells us that "they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts" (Gal. 5:24). The Christ, or true idea of God and man, erases false affections from the human mind. Sensuality is a negative, mindless, nonintelligent force that cannot resist the positive might of intelligence and truth. The Lamb consciousness, or the consciousness of Love's all-inclusive purity, slays the beast of lust. It reveals man's real nature with its immortal cravings and pure affections.
The most stunning blow that can be delivered sensuous thoughts and images is the realization that they have no law or force through which to operate against man, because God is the only Lawgiver; they have no mind through which to exist or be conscious, because God is the only Mind. The unholy thoughts of spiritualism are wiped out of individual consciousness by the realization that there is but one infinite Spirit, which manifests only holy thoughts. The aggressive suggestion that man is formed of dust and endowed with sensuous affections vanishes before a clear perception that Love manifests pure affection, and that man, as Love's likeness, is the very image of this affection. Our defense against unholiness demands absolute honesty. The man of integrity, by clinging steadfastly to holy thoughts which emanate from the one Spirit, remains unswervingly loyal to the Christ-ideal which Christian Science presents.
The sufferings of sense are sometimes the divine agent in forcing mortals to abandon the devouring suggestions of the flesh for the sustaining affections of Soul. The wintry winds drive us to shelter. Earth's shadows force us to flee to the Christ-light.
The penitent mortal who has drifted with the dreams of sense and been deceived by their imaginary pleasures or pains need only turn from this false sense to his God-given spiritual sense to find the pure affection that is eternally man's. This pure affection is forever intact and coexists with spiritual sense. When the individual turns through suffering or Science from the misconception of himself as a mortal and accepts the spiritual sense of himself, he finds his immortal selfhood, which reflects the Mind of Christ with its concomitant of unselfed spiritual love. When he realizes that he has simply placed love on a false, material basis, he returns like the prodigal to the house of his Father and there finds what he had never really lost.
What a contrast between the fruits of the affections that are from above and those that are from beneath! Appetites of the flesh and inordinate desires demoralize thought. If not denied and condemned, they are nurtured and result in bondage, despair, and suffering. The unselfed affections, on the other hand, are a light from heaven that dissipates mental darkness, ensures success, and restores intellectual and moral harmony. They are the dissolvent of hardheartedness, pride, fear, and self-will. Pure affection forgets self, serves others, and blesses its enemies. It hallows home with tenderness, restores the good supposedly lost, stills discontent, and brings peace to the troubled heart. It underlies the charity that silences criticism; it separates evil from the individual and denounces the former, while it saves the latter.
How can one distinguish pure affection from infatuation, the serpent's counterfeit of love? By determining the quality of his thought toward his fellow man. Infatuation is binding and often tormenting; love is never anxious or personally possessive, but ever tranquil and liberating. Thoughts of those for whom one may feel an infatuation may be infected with fear and jealousy; thoughts for those whom one truly loves are winged with joy and peace. Infatuation obsesses its victim; love frees everyone upon whom it rests.
Pure affection never neglects the object upon which it rests. The Christian Scientist who manifests this pure affection for his church, for example, never neglects his duty to it. He is on guard against the call of evil suggestion that would lure him away from its Wednesday meeting or Sunday service, be it pleasure, apathy, indifference, business, weather, or weariness. He knows that his love for his church that draws him to its services gives him rest from his labors. Often have individuals been healed at services of the very fear or malady that vainly attempted to keep them away.
If one is inclined to neglect his church and would learn to love it and do his full duty to it, he must first learn to love and understand the inspired woman whose mission is foretold in Biblical prophecy, and who gave us this church and is forever identified with it. When he sees Mrs. Eddy in her true light as our God-anointed and God-appointed Leader, as the woman who through her church is meeting the challenge of sin and is leading the human race out of the desolate wilderness of sense into the bright land of Christian Science, he will, indeed, love her and her church and rejoice in the high privilege of being present at its every service.
It is through the affections from above that we receive the law of God and are brought under His loving care and protection. Our Leader says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 172): "That which is termed 'natural science,' the evidences whereof are taken in by the five personal senses, presents but a finite, feeble sense of the infinite law of God; which law is written on the heart, received through the affections, spiritually understood, and demonstrated in our lives." A Christian Scientist was once immediately healed of intense pain by the demonstration of this law. While being shown over an Atlantic liner, he was slightly ahead of the other members of his party, and while walking through a poorly lighted passageway, he struck his head violently on an iron crossbeam. He was thrown backwards, but instead of thinking of himself, he at once thought with consideration and affection of his friends who were with him and returned to warn them of the danger ahead. Instantly his suffering departed. The law of God had been invoked through affectionate regard for the welfare of others, and it completely restored his harmony.
Pure affection is, therefore, not a mere abstraction; it is a vital and active force. It is a moral quality which involuntarily counteracts evil through the operation of spiritual law. It is a quality under the law, so that when it appears in human consciousness, the law is there to heal and to protect.
We are all capable of demonstrating the law of Love as did the Scientist on the Atlantic liner, for every individual has within his true consciousness the affection that is from above, this quality of being that operates as a law of exclusion from his consciousness of error of every sort. We need only to utilize what we eternally have. Let us then obey the admonition of our Leader when she says (ibid., p. 174), "Let us open our affections to the Principle that moves all in harmony,—from the falling of a sparrow to the rolling of a world."
