Throughout the writings of Mary Baker Eddy one finds references to the healing power of unselfed love. On page 1 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, for example, we find this: "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God, a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love."Science and Health, p. 1; Mrs. Eddy's writings also contain denunciations of self-love as a hindrance to healing. She says, for example: "Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error, self-will, self-justification, and self-love, which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death." p. 242;
The series of comments from practicing Christian Scientists now running in the Journal on "How I Study the Lesson-Sermon" show something of the use one can make of the weekly Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lessons. They also indicate some of the ways in which the value of these lessons appears through unselfed love. In my own growth as a student of Christian Science I have gained more from regular study of the Lesson-Sermon than any other one thing. I do not know an active Christian Scientist who does not share this evaluation of the weekly lesson.
Through the years, however, I have noticed one significant factor. My study has brought to me the healing answers I have needed on a particular day only when I have approached the Lesson-Sermon with unselfed love. Sometimes I have opened the books for this study with only myself and my needs in mind. In this state of thought the words meant little. But perhaps one sentence would catch my thought and challenge it to love God or to love man beyond my own limited sense of man. My approach would change. Like moving from a dark room to a lighted room, I could see and feel the meanings begin to flow into my consciousness, and healing ideas would appear.
