GENTLENESS is essential in the healing ministry of Christian Science. As a quality of God, divine Love, it is always timely and effective. One who is unfailingly gentle in one's practice of Science bears witness to one's confidence in God's omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniaction and also acknowledges man to be God's spiritual image and likeness, perfect and eternal.
To some, gentleness is a quality belonging solely to the feminine nature of mankind, indicating weakness and lack of authority. Just the opposite is true. In Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, God is defined as both Father and Mother. It follows, then, that individual spiritual man, emanating from God, expresses both masculine and feminine qualities. Therefore, gentleness balances such masculine qualities as justice, vigor, and strength.
One who has learned this important fact in Christian Science is consistently gentle. He knows that sooner or later every human being must awaken to the necessity of manifesting the complete nature of Love: the manhood and womanhood of God's creating. He understands that divine Love is persuasive yet gentle, the irresistible force which is leavening, purifying, and redeeming human consciousness, "till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13).
