No one is without a friend, for God is the friend of all who turn to Him in faith and confidence. Those who seek the Father have as their familiar companion Him "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (James 1:17) Deeply satisfying is this friendship, for it unfolds God's gracious will toward His reflection, man. One may confide in this companion his most secret yearning for purity and spiritual usefulness with no liability of perverse misinterpretation, no danger of misused trust. In this great friend all may find support of their righteous idealism, for God is the Principle of all righteousness, its very source. He underlies good and multiplies it endlessly in man's experience. Divine Love acquaints one with his spiritual selfhood, God's image, and this is the test of genuine friendship and its aim.
Friendship with God teaches one to be a friend to himself—to demonstrate the real self, which finds human expression in impartial affection for, and interest in, others. Mary Baker Eddy speaks of her own demonstration of real being through true friendliness in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," where she writes (p. 275) "Working and praying for my dear friends' and my dear enemies' health, happiness, and holiness, the true sense of being goes on." And she says further, "Doing unto others as we would that they do by us, is immortality's self."
Christian Science is the friend of mankind, and those who heal through its revealing ministrations place friendship on a level of lofty interpretation. They acquaint themselves and others with the individuality which Spirit makes, and prove the bond of such friendship to be the universal fatherhood of God. They reject the illusion of mortal frailty and inequality and disclose the man whom God forms, perfect and intact in Mind. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul exhorts those who have "put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him," to thoughts of fellowship expressed in freedom from racial prejudice, religious ritualism, and social inequality, and to deeds of mercy, kindness, and forgiveness. "And above all these things," he writes (3:14), "put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness." The charity which heals is the understanding of man's immortal perfection, the friendship which proves its quality by freeing mortals from the evils of human experience.
