THE BROTHER WHOM WE SEE.

SAMUEL GREENWOOD


MAN'S rightful attitude towards his fellow-man has remained an unsolved problem in all human history. Selfishness, harder than adamant and more pitiless, blocks every entrance to human hearts, and only the "solvent of Love" can remove it and liberate mortals. Jesus gave this solution to mankind, and in his wondrous life demonstrated the supremacy of Love over all selfishness, malice, envy, revenge. He neither gave wrong for wrong, nor hate for hate. He realized that Love is the life of all, including his foes, and that loving is therefore the necessity of living. His two great commandments of supreme love for God Good and selfless love for the neighbor, are the only true solution for the problems between man and man. This was later emphasized by John in the following passage from his First Epistle: "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen," in which we learn that only by our love for our brother can we measure our love for God.

Infinite Love is no respecter of persons; does not respect personal evidence, but sustains forever the unchangeable beauty and completeness of God's image, unfallen man. The divine effulgence of that Light in which is no darkness at all waits to dispel the mist that arises from mortals' material sense, that false sense which would displace God's fact of harmony with a lie of discord. Do we ever forget, in the joy of our own deliverance, that we are daily surrounded by those whose sense of life is as dark and wretched as ours ever was before the light of the Science of God, Christian Science shone upon us? Are we loving the brothers whom we see thus? Are we quite sure that the opportunities which Love bestows are not neglected in our care of self? In the measure of our gratitude for redemption from disease, and for the priceless privilege of knowing Christian Science, we will rise above selfish considerations, so that the light which Truth has kindled in our hearts may shine brightly for those still "in the deep darkness of belief," who have not yet heard God's sweet message to man in that wonderful text-book of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker G. Eddy.

Our debt to divine Love is very great. Money could never pay it. Observance of forms, the unction of words, the letter of deeds, count for nothing; only loving can discharge it, and we must begin where we are by loving our brothers as we now see them. When Moses reached a higher plane, where he attained a demonstrable knowledge of God, he devoted his life to the liberation of his brethren from their wrongful bondage. Are not our own brethren in the flesh bearing as heavy burdens under as hard taskmasters as the Hebrews of old in Egypt? Ignorance of God, fear, false education, false laws, have laid grievous burdens upon them, disease and sorrow, sin and want and death. These are the brothers who demand our love.

Love's nature is to give. From everlasting it is giving out the glory of ineffable bliss, the joy of purity and peace. Are we reflecting this bounty for our brother? This is the giving that enriches but does not impoverish. Are we thinking the truest thoughts, talking the purest, happiest, most hopeful things, living our best, every day for him? However much our hearts may yearn over him we cannot force him into Christian Science; we cannot drag him into our churches or influence his thoughts unbidden; we may not be, oftentimes, even on speaking terms with him. How, then, are we to love him?

What is this brother whom we see? Is it not what we see of him? In our present feeble perception of spiritual being, man appears to us as the outcome of matter rather than of spirit, and subject to merciless and degrading passions, the victim of woe and burdened with sore distresses. Through this lens of the flesh we see his unlovely traits, his faults and follies, his sinfulness and suffering. We cannot love the unlovely or look with affection on the hideousness of sin and disease; yet we are told that unless we are loving the visible son we cannot love the invisible Father. "Like father, like son." If our man is bad and unlovable, must not God, the Father, be likewise, and vice versa? Is it not as self-evident that it is only our own concept of man that we are seeing and not God's, as it is that the only true concept of any one is that which God has of him? To the perfect Father the child is ever lovely and beautified and good. If man does not appear thus to us the fault must be with our perception. The lens cannot be true which presents distorted objects to the vision in place of the symmetrical original.

If our present sense of our brother is as one sinful and sorrow-laden, unloving and repellent, are we not bound in love to visit in our own consciousness this false concept with the ministrations of Truth? In the secrecy of our own thoughts we can minister to this wrong sense of our brother with the loving denial of all that is untrue to the Father, till our perception of man shall see beyond the sensuous illusions of sin and disease, and behold him as the son of God.

This love for our brother is the necessity of our own salvation, for we cannot rise above the conditions we impose upon him. Our thoughts of others come out of the mental atmosphere of our own life, and indicate our growth towards the true idea or our distance from our ideal. Only the love that "thinketh no evil" can perceive the perfect man. The infinitude of Good makes all evil unreal. Our brother's sin and suffering are as baseless as our own. Love bids us know this, so that our silent prayers, wherein we declare man's unity with God, shall include all mankind.

Declaring as we do in Christian Science the infinite Fatherhood of Good, how can we accept any sonship or brotherhood of evil? If through this Christ Science we have learned the unreliability of material sense testimony, and the utter falsity of any supposed evil cause or effect, our rejection of these conditions must include whatever of discord is comprised in our consciousness of existence. Our efforts to realize our own freedom from all that is unlike God are co-active and co-successful with our efforts to see our brother thus; for if errors do not rightfully belong to us, neither do they to him; and to think otherwise is to be a malpractitioner and forfeit the protection divine Love bestows.

And then there is our brother Scientist do we love him as we see him? Are we willing to unite in fellowship with him in common love for our Cause, until divine Love shall remove our little differences and we know each other better? Criticism is neither the language nor the thought of love. Our brother may not be doing all that we think he should, for he may have a very different sense of working out his salvation from what we have. If love is the sentinel of our thoughts we will not condemn nor be jealous, but in tender meekness we will cover his imperfections and shortcomings with the mantle of that charity which hopeth all things, and is kind.

This is surely no time for the indulgence of petty disagreements which dwindle into wretched insignificance beside the great work before us. The word's harvest is white and waiting for the reapers; and God is calling for those who will make self nothing and His work all, to thrust in the sickle of Truth. Oh, may we, as Christian Scientists, strive daily for the Christ-mind for more selfless love, that we may lay upon the altar of Christian Science all personal strife and vainglory, so that these shall no longer be "spots" in our "feasts of charity," nor a blot before the world upon the fair name of the Church of Christ, Scientist, which stands for universal love and harmony. Dear Love divine, hasten the day when we shall have but one reply to all error: "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."


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