"WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS LOVE, SWEET LOVE . . ." went a popular '60s song, echoing a much deeper cry of ages. Love is the first response to suffering. Persistent, courageous, unselfish love comforts countless lives every day.
Yet even the sweetest human love doesn't promise to end suffering. Realists would say that's not possible—except, that is, for some spiritual realists in all ages. They've recognized that suffering will cease when the illusion of material reality gives place to understanding God's perfect spiritual universe. While on earth, prophets such as Moses, Elijah, and Christ Jesus saw through that illusion to such a degree that they were able to face down despots, avert disasters, heal the tormented, and raise the dead—not through religious ecstasy or willpower, but through a spiritual consciousness attained by ceaseless, humble prayer.
What the world needs now and always is scientific love (yes, the two words go together) that proves in tangible, daily ways that creation is as unchangeably good as the divine Principle that causes it. Even the hope that this harmony is realizable to some degree now begins to turn one's search for solutions to suffering in a different direction. The modern-day prophet Mary Baker Eddy wrote: "Human theories are helpless to make man harmonious or immortal, since he is so already, according to Christian Science. Our only need is to know this and reduce to practice the real man's divine Principle, Love" (Science and Health, p. 490).
