The world's great need of love is apparent on every side, a love that is deep, abiding, and unchanging under all circumstances. Learning to express more love in our innermost thoughts will enable us to be more loving and kind, forgiving and patient, friendly and co-operative with our fellow men.
In I John we read (4:16), "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." The Bible is full of accounts of how the understanding of ever-present Love protected and defended mankind, fed the multitudes, healed the sick, made the maimed whole, redeemed the sinner, and raised the dead to life and health. In fact, there is nothing that God, infinite Love, cannot do for mankind.
All through the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, runs the theme of God's great love and care for His children. Christian Science teaches us how to love spiritually. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy makes this statement (p. 365): "If the Scientist reaches his patient through divine Love, the healing work will be accomplished at one visit, and the disease will vanish into its native nothingness like dew before the morning sunshine."
The practice of Christian Science healing is based on the understanding and demonstration of divine Love, which glorifies God as All and renders null and void the beliefs, fears, and doubts of humanity. Through spiritual understanding, the superstitions, idiosyncrasies, and limitations of mortals, as well as sickness and disease, are destroyed.
The practice of divine Love begins with oneself. Each individual needs to love God supremely and daily to demonstrate his own overcoming of sin, self -justification, self-love, envy, and jealousy before he can assist his fellow men along the way of salvation.
Without expressing Love can one in praying earnestly for another see the perfection of God and His pure likeness, man? No! With eyes blinded by such characteristics as self-love and envy or closed in apathy and ease in matter, can one demonstrate the all-power of healing Love? The answer is again No. When we pray consistently and understandingly, we gain unselfed love for God and man.
The Bible says (Ps. 17:15), "As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." Constantly awake to divine Love as All-presence, one beholds God's "face in righteousness," and the mortal selfhood begins to disappear. As a result the shafts of evil are proved powerless.
In a consciousness filled with love there is no room for false beliefs of sickness, sin, or death. With purity and love filling consciousness, one sees his fellow men clearly as truly perfect, loving and lovable, whole and free, and recognizes the nothingness of all false and tempting suggestions.
Mrs. Eddy says in the "Dedicatory Sermon" (Pulpit and Press, pp. 9, 10): "Practice, not profession,—goodness, not doctrines,—spiritual understanding, not mere belief, gain the ear and right hand of omnipotence, and call down blessings infinite. 'Faith without works is dead.' The foundation of enlightened faith is Christ's teachings and practice."
Practice in our human experience is the natural expression of what God is actually doing divinely. Christian Science practice is the daily living of Love, Truth, in the minutiae of our human affairs. Christian Science healing is the evidence of one's daily practice of the Christ, Truth.
To pray, to talk with God, brings an awareness that we are loved, fed, comforted, and strengthened, that our daily tasks are God-directed. Scientific knowing is uplifting and inspiring and brings with it an assurance and an expectation of goodness, which eliminate fear and doubt.
Spiritual communion with God reveals man's true being inseparable from Life, Truth, and Love, aware of the infinitude of Spirit and the immortality and beauty of Soul. No matter what our human occupation may be—housewife, businessman, or Christian Science practitioner—we are all in the practice of living divine Love. Through prayer, with its scientific knowing and spiritual communion with our heavenly Father, we make our practice a joyous activity.
James counsels us (1:22), "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only." We need to be "doers of the word." Thus we practice Christian Science. In doing the work, there is no time for idle dreaming, for mulling over past mistakes, injustices, hurts, and disappointments.
There must be scientific knowing of what is actually going on. Scientific knowing reveals Life living its immortal continuity, wherein is no sickness, sin, or death. This knowing reveals Truth affirming its reality and destroying all the lies, illusions, trickery, or deceit of the carnal mind. Divine Love is ever giving of its all-inclusive tenderness, which dispels hatred, revenge, anger, or resentment.
One morning a Christian Scientist received a telephone call from someone she had befriended. However, the conversation soon turned into an outpouring of false accusations, criticism, and hate from her friend. The Scientist remained calm and quiet and prayed that she could demonstrate what Christian Science really is by being divinely loving.
In the days and weeks that followed she prayed earnestly to put into practice the divine Love which she knew would bring a healing. First, she carefully examined her own thinking to see if she were guilty in any way which would seem to justify the accusations. Whatever false traits she found, she corrected. This enlarged her understanding of the practice of divine Love so that she could see her friend as she really was, loving, kind, unselfish, and appreciative of good.
In the course of events the two met, and an apology was made and accepted. The Scientist had learned the richness of compassion, tenderness, and forgiveness by putting into practice the healing Love as taught in Christian Science. Merely to have professed Love would have only salved hurt feelings, but practicing divine Love brought healing.
We read (Ps. 100:4), "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name." True thankfulness is a just acknowledgment that God, good, is ever present and that His law of Love is ever operative in man's behalf.
A consciousness filled with praise and glory to God is easily reached with His angelic messages of hope and faith. Thus we receive the right, spiritual ideas which are capable of destroying sin, sickness, disease, and death and minister in tenderest love Christ's healing power. Faithfully practicing divine Love will do wonders for mankind and will help to lead all out of bondage into the freedom of Soul and the demonstration of God's infinite goodness.
The study of Christian Science begins with the letter, but it is the practice of what is learned through the letter that brings spiritual understanding. In our joy at glimpsing the wonders of spiritual things, we are often tempted to profess more than we have demonstrated. But we must learn what Mrs. Eddy teaches, that "practice, not profession," gains "the ear and right hand of omnipotence."
