love

83:3.1The an­cients mis­trusted love and prom­ises; they thought that abid­ing unions must be guar­an­teed by some tan­gi­ble se­cu­rity, prop­erty. For this rea­son, the pur­chase price of a wife was re­garded as a for­feit or de­posit which the hus­band was doomed to lose in case of di­vorce or de­ser­tion. Once the pur­chase price of a bride had been paid, many tribes per­mit­ted the hus­band’s brand to be burned upon her. Africans still buy their wives. A love wife, or a white man’s wife, they com­pare to a cat be­cause she costs noth­ing.

182:1.5“You gave me twelve men, and I have kept them all save one, the son of re­venge, who would not have fur­ther fel­low­ship with us. These men are weak and frail, but I know we can trust them; I have proved them; they love me, even as they rev­er­ence you. While they must suf­fer much for my sake, I de­sire that they should also be filled with the joy of the as­sur­ance of son­ship in the heav­enly king­dom. I have given these men your word and have taught them the truth. The world may hate them, even as it has hated me, but I do not ask that you take them out of the world, only that you keep them from the evil in the world. Sanc­tify them in the truth; your word is truth. And as you sent me into this world, even so am I about to send these men into the world. For their sakes I have lived among men and have con­se­crated my life to your ser­vice that I might in­spire them to be pu­ri­fied through the truth I have taught them and the love I have re­vealed to them. I well know, my Fa­ther, that there is no need for me to ask you to watch over these breth­ren af­ter I have gone; I know you love them even as I, but I do this that they may the bet­ter re­al­ize the Fa­ther loves mor­tal men even as does the Son.

177:4.11Ju­das did not re­al­ize it at this time, but he had been a sub­con­scious critic of Je­sus ever since John the Bap­tist was be­headed by Herod. Deep down in his heart Ju­das al­ways re­sented the fact that Je­sus did not save John. You should not for­get that Ju­das had been a dis­ci­ple of John be­fore he be­came a fol­lower of Je­sus. And all these ac­cu­mu­la­tions of hu­man re­sent­ment and bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment which Ju­das had laid by in his soul in ha­bil­i­ments of hate were now well or­ga­nized in his sub­con­scious mind and ready to spring up to en­gulf him when he once dared to sep­a­rate him­self from the sup­port­ing in­flu­ence of his breth­ren while at the same time ex­pos­ing him­self to the clever in­sin­u­a­tions and sub­tle ridicule of the en­e­mies of Je­sus. Ev­ery time Ju­das al­lowed his hopes to soar high and Je­sus would do or say some­thing to dash them to pieces, there was al­ways left in Ju­das’s heart a scar of bit­ter re­sent­ment; and as these scars mul­ti­plied, pres­ently that heart, so of­ten wounded, lost all real af­fec­tion for the one who had in­flicted this dis­taste­ful ex­pe­ri­ence upon a well-in­ten­tioned but cow­ardly and self-cen­tered per­son­al­ity. Ju­das did not re­al­ize it, but he was a cow­ard. Ac­cord­ingly was he al­ways in­clined to as­sign to Je­sus cow­ardice as the mo­tive which led him so of­ten to refuse to grasp for power or glory when they were ap­par­ently within his easy reach. And ev­ery mor­tal man knows full well how love, even when once gen­uine, can, through dis­ap­point­ment, jeal­ousy, and long-con­tin­ued re­sent­ment, be even­tu­ally turned into ac­tual hate.

196:3.18This pro­found ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­al­ity of the di­vine in­dwelling for­ever tran­scends the crude ma­te­ri­al­is­tic tech­nique of the phys­i­cal sci­ences. You can­not put spir­i­tual joy un­der a mi­cro­scope; you can­not weigh love in a bal­ance; you can­not mea­sure moral val­ues; nei­ther can you es­ti­mate the qual­ity of spir­i­tual wor­ship.

• divinity correlated in personality

0:1.17Di­vin­ity is crea­ture com­pre­hen­si­ble as truth, beauty, and good­ness; cor­re­lated in per­son­al­ity as love, mercy, and min­istry; dis­closed on im­per­sonal lev­els as jus­tice, power, and sov­er­eignty.

• God is love

1:3.8I come forth from the Eter­nal, and I have re­peat­edly re­turned to the pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. I know of the ac­tu­al­ity and per­son­al­ity of the First Source and Cen­ter, the Eter­nal and Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. I know that, while the great God is ab­so­lute, eter­nal, and in­fi­nite, he is also good, di­vine, and gra­cious. I know the truth of the great dec­la­ra­tions: “God is spirit” and “God is love,” and these two at­tri­butes are most com­pletely re­vealed to the uni­verse in the Eter­nal Son.

• God is love

2:5.1“God is love”; there­fore his only per­sonal at­ti­tude to­wards the af­fairs of the uni­verse is al­ways a re­ac­tion of di­vine af­fec­tion. The Fa­ther loves us suf­fi­ciently to be­stow his life upon us. “He makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the un­just.”

2:5.2It is wrong to think of God as be­ing coaxed into lov­ing his chil­dren be­cause of the sac­ri­fices of his Sons or the in­ter­ces­sion of his sub­or­di­nate crea­tures, “for the Fa­ther him­self loves you.” It is in re­sponse to this pa­ter­nal af­fec­tion that God sends the mar­velous Ad­justers to in­dwell the minds of men. God’s love is uni­ver­sal; “whoso­ever will may come.” He would “have all men be saved by com­ing into the knowl­edge of the truth.” He is “not will­ing that any should per­ish.”

2:5.3The Cre­ators are the very first to at­tempt to save man from the dis­as­trous re­sults of his fool­ish trans­gres­sion of the di­vine laws. God’s love is by na­ture a fa­therly af­fec­tion; there­fore does he some­times “chas­ten us for our own profit, that we may be par­tak­ers of his ho­li­ness.” Even dur­ing your fiery tri­als re­mem­ber that “in all our af­flic­tions he is af­flicted with us.”

2:5.4God is di­vinely kind to sin­ners. When rebels re­turn to righ­teous­ness, they are mer­ci­fully re­ceived, “for our God will abun­dantly par­don.” “I am he who blots out your trans­gres­sions for my own sake, and I will not re­mem­ber your sins.” “Be­hold what man­ner of love the Fa­ther has be­stowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God.”

2:5.5Af­ter all, the great­est ev­i­dence of the good­ness of God and the su­preme rea­son for lov­ing him is the in­dwelling gift of the Fa­ther—the Ad­juster who so pa­tiently awaits the hour when you both shall be eter­nally made one. Though you can­not find God by search­ing, if you will sub­mit to the lead­ing of the in­dwelling spirit, you will be unerringly guided, step by step, life by life, through uni­verse upon uni­verse, and age by age, un­til you fi­nally stand in the pres­ence of the Par­a­dise per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

2:5.6How un­rea­son­able that you should not wor­ship God be­cause the lim­i­ta­tions of hu­man na­ture and the hand­i­caps of your ma­te­rial cre­ation make it im­pos­si­ble for you to see him. Be­tween you and God there is a tremen­dous dis­tance (phys­i­cal space) to be tra­versed. There like­wise ex­ists a great gulf of spir­i­tual dif­fer­en­tial which must be bridged; but not­with­stand­ing all that phys­i­cally and spir­i­tu­ally sep­a­rates you from the Par­a­dise per­sonal pres­ence of God, stop and pon­der the solemn fact that God lives within you; he has in his own way al­ready bridged the gulf. He has sent of him­self, his spirit, to live in you and to toil with you as you pur­sue your eter­nal uni­verse ca­reer.

2:5.7I find it easy and pleas­ant to wor­ship one who is so great and at the same time so af­fec­tion­ately de­voted to the up­lift­ing min­istry of his lowly crea­tures. I nat­u­rally love one who is so pow­er­ful in cre­ation and in the con­trol thereof, and yet who is so per­fect in good­ness and so faith­ful in the lov­ing-kind­ness which con­stantly over­shad­ows us. I think I would love God just as much if he were not so great and pow­er­ful, as long as he is so good and mer­ci­ful. We all love the Fa­ther more be­cause of his na­ture than in rec­og­ni­tion of his amaz­ing at­tri­butes.

2:5.8When I ob­serve the Cre­ator Sons and their sub­or­di­nate ad­min­is­tra­tors strug­gling so valiantly with the man­i­fold dif­fi­cul­ties of time in­her­ent in the evo­lu­tion of the uni­verses of space, I dis­cover that I bear these lesser rulers of the uni­verses a great and pro­found af­fec­tion. Af­ter all, I think we all, in­clud­ing the mor­tals of the realms, love the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and all other be­ings, di­vine or hu­man, be­cause we dis­cern that these per­son­al­i­ties truly love us. The ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing is very much a di­rect re­sponse to the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing loved. Know­ing that God loves me, I should con­tinue to love him su­premely, even though he were di­vested of all his at­tri­butes of su­prem­acy, ul­ti­macy, and ab­so­lute­ness.

• follows us now and throughout eternal ages
• intelligent and farseeing parental affection

2:5.9The Fa­ther’s love fol­lows us now and through­out the end­less cir­cle of the eter­nal ages. As you pon­der the lov­ing na­ture of God, there is only one rea­son­able and nat­u­ral per­son­al­ity re­ac­tion thereto: You will in­creas­ingly love your Maker; you will yield to God an af­fec­tion anal­o­gous to that given by a child to an earthly par­ent; for, as a fa­ther, a real fa­ther, a true fa­ther, loves his chil­dren, so the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther loves and for­ever seeks the wel­fare of his cre­ated sons and daugh­ters.

• God is love, but love is not God

2:5.10But the love of God is an in­tel­li­gent and farsee­ing pa­ren­tal af­fec­tion. The di­vine love func­tions in uni­fied as­so­ci­a­tion with di­vine wis­dom and all other in­fi­nite char­ac­ter­is­tics of the per­fect na­ture of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. God is love, but love is not God. The great­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of the di­vine love for mor­tal be­ings is ob­served in the be­stowal of the Thought Ad­justers, but your great­est rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther’s love is seen in the be­stowal life of his Son Mi­chael as he lived on earth the ideal spir­i­tual life. It is the in­dwelling Ad­juster who in­di­vid­u­al­izes the love of God to each hu­man soul.

2:5.11At times I am al­most pained to be com­pelled to por­tray the di­vine af­fec­tion of the heav­enly Fa­ther for his uni­verse chil­dren by the em­ploy­ment of the hu­man word sym­bol love. This term, even though it does con­note man’s high­est con­cept of the mor­tal re­la­tions of re­spect and de­vo­tion, is so fre­quently des­ig­na­tive of so much of hu­man re­la­tion­ship that is wholly ig­no­ble and ut­terly un­fit to be known by any word which is also used to in­di­cate the match­less af­fec­tion of the liv­ing God for his uni­verse crea­tures! How un­for­tu­nate that I can­not make use of some su­per­nal and ex­clu­sive term which would con­vey to the mind of man the true na­ture and ex­qui­sitely beau­ti­ful sig­nif­i­cance of the di­vine af­fec­tion of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

• dominant characteristic of all God’s personal dealings with creatures

2:5.12When man loses sight of the love of a per­sonal God, the king­dom of God be­comes merely the king­dom of good. Not­with­stand­ing the in­fi­nite unity of the di­vine na­ture, love is the dom­i­nant char­ac­ter­is­tic of all God’s per­sonal deal­ings with his crea­tures.

• God loves not like a father but as a father

2:6.4The con­cept of God as a king-judge, al­though it fos­tered a high moral stan­dard and cre­ated a law-re­spect­ing peo­ple as a group, left the in­di­vid­ual be­liever in a sad po­si­tion of in­se­cu­rity re­spect­ing his sta­tus in time and in eter­nity. The later He­brew proph­ets pro­claimed God to be a Fa­ther to Is­rael; Je­sus re­vealed God as the Fa­ther of each hu­man be­ing. The en­tire mor­tal con­cept of God is tran­scen­dently il­lu­mi­nated by the life of Je­sus. Self­less­ness is in­her­ent in pa­ren­tal love. God loves not like a fa­ther, but as a fa­ther. He is the Par­a­dise Fa­ther of ev­ery uni­verse per­son­al­ity.

• effect › saves the sinner

2:6.8God loves the sin­ner and hates the sin: such a state­ment is true phil­o­soph­i­cally, but God is a tran­scen­dent per­son­al­ity, and per­sons can only love and hate other per­sons. Sin is not a per­son. God loves the sin­ner be­cause he is a per­son­al­ity re­al­ity (po­ten­tially eter­nal), while to­wards sin God strikes no per­sonal at­ti­tude, for sin is not a spir­i­tual re­al­ity; it is not per­sonal; there­fore does only the jus­tice of God take cog­nizance of its ex­is­tence. The love of God saves the sin­ner; the law of God de­stroys the sin. This at­ti­tude of the di­vine na­ture would ap­par­ently change if the sin­ner fi­nally iden­ti­fied him­self wholly with sin just as the same mor­tal mind may also fully iden­tify it­self with the in­dwelling spirit Ad­juster. Such a sin-iden­ti­fied mor­tal would then be­come wholly un­spir­i­tual in na­ture (and there­fore per­son­ally un­real) and would ex­pe­ri­ence even­tual ex­tinc­tion of be­ing. Un­re­al­ity, even in­com­plete­ness of crea­ture na­ture, can­not ex­ist for­ever in a pro­gress­ingly real and in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual uni­verse.

• volitional will of God

2:6.9Fac­ing the world of per­son­al­ity, God is dis­cov­ered to be a lov­ing per­son; fac­ing the spir­i­tual world, he is a per­sonal love; in re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence he is both. Love iden­ti­fies the vo­li­tional will of God. The good­ness of God rests at the bot­tom of the di­vine free-will­ness—the uni­ver­sal ten­dency to love, show mercy, man­i­fest pa­tience, and min­is­ter for­give­ness.

• effect › he who dwells in l. dwells in God

3:1.5Truly of the hu­man race has it been said, “You are of God” be­cause “he who dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him.” Even in wrong­do­ing you tor­ment the in­dwelling gift of God, for the Thought Ad­juster must needs go through the con­se­quences of evil think­ing with the hu­man mind of its in­car­cer­a­tion.

• mortals can feel undiminished impact of

3:4.6Mor­tal man can­not pos­si­bly know the in­fini­tude of the heav­enly Fa­ther. Fi­nite mind can­not think through such an ab­so­lute truth or fact. But this same fi­nite hu­man be­ing can ac­tu­ally feel—lit­er­ally ex­pe­ri­ence—the full and undi­min­ished im­pact of such an in­fi­nite Fa­ther’s LOVE. Such a love can be truly ex­pe­ri­enced, al­beit while qual­ity of ex­pe­ri­ence is un­lim­ited, quan­tity of such an ex­pe­ri­ence is strictly lim­ited by the hu­man ca­pac­ity for spir­i­tual re­cep­tiv­ity and by the as­so­ci­ated ca­pac­ity to love the Fa­ther in re­turn.

• God’s greatest satisfaction is in loving, being loved

4:4.6In God the Fa­ther free­will per­for­mances are not ruled by power, nor are they guided by in­tel­lect alone; the di­vine per­son­al­ity is de­fined as con­sist­ing in spirit and man­i­fest­ing him­self to the uni­verses as love. There­fore, in all his per­sonal re­la­tions with the crea­ture per­son­al­i­ties of the uni­verses, the First Source and Cen­ter is al­ways and con­sis­tently a lov­ing Fa­ther. God is a Fa­ther in the high­est sense of the term. He is eter­nally mo­ti­vated by the per­fect ide­al­ism of di­vine love, and that ten­der na­ture finds its strong­est ex­pres­sion and great­est sat­is­fac­tion in lov­ing and be­ing loved.

• sum total of truth, beauty, and goodness

5:4.6The He­brews based their re­li­gion on good­ness; the Greeks on beauty; both re­li­gions sought truth. Je­sus re­vealed a God of love, and love is all-em­brac­ing of truth, beauty, and good­ness.

6:3.1The Son shares the jus­tice and righ­teous­ness of the Trin­ity but over­shad­ows these di­vin­ity traits by the in­fi­nite per­son­al­iza­tion of the Fa­ther’s love and mercy; the Son is the rev­e­la­tion of di­vine love to the uni­verses. As God is love, so the Son is mercy. The Son can­not love more than the Fa­ther, but he can show mercy to crea­tures in one ad­di­tional way, for he not only is a pri­mal cre­ator like the Fa­ther, but he is also the Eter­nal Son of that same Fa­ther, thereby shar­ing in the son­ship ex­pe­ri­ence of all other sons of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

6:3.2The Eter­nal Son is the great mercy min­is­ter to all cre­ation. Mercy is the essence of the Son’s spir­i­tual char­ac­ter. The man­dates of the Eter­nal Son, as they go forth over the spirit cir­cuits of the Sec­ond Source and Cen­ter, are keyed in tones of mercy.

6:3.3To com­pre­hend the love of the Eter­nal Son, you must first per­ceive its di­vine source, the Fa­ther, who is love, and then be­hold the un­fold­ing of this in­fi­nite af­fec­tion in the far-flung min­istry of the In­fi­nite Spirit and his al­most lim­it­less host of min­is­ter­ing per­son­al­i­ties.

6:3.4The min­istry of the Eter­nal Son is de­voted to the rev­e­la­tion of the God of love to the uni­verse of uni­verses. This di­vine Son is not en­gaged in the ig­no­ble task of try­ing to per­suade his gra­cious Fa­ther to love his lowly crea­tures and to show mercy to the wrong­do­ers of time. How wrong to en­vis­age the Eter­nal Son as ap­peal­ing to the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther to show mercy to his lowly crea­tures on the ma­te­rial worlds of space! Such con­cepts of God are crude and grotesque. Rather should you re­al­ize that all the mer­ci­ful min­is­tra­tions of the Sons of God are a di­rect rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther’s heart of uni­ver­sal love and in­fi­nite com­pas­sion. The Fa­ther’s love is the real and eter­nal source of the Son’s mercy.

6:3.5God is love, the Son is mercy. Mercy is ap­plied love, the Fa­ther’s love in ac­tion in the per­son of his Eter­nal Son. The love of this uni­ver­sal Son is like­wise uni­ver­sal. As love is com­pre­hended on a sex planet, the love of God is more com­pa­ra­ble to the love of a fa­ther, while the love of the Eter­nal Son is more like the af­fec­tion of a mother. Crude, in­deed, are such il­lus­tra­tions, but I em­ploy them in the hope of con­vey­ing to the hu­man mind the thought that there is a dif­fer­ence, not in di­vine con­tent but in qual­ity and tech­nique of ex­pres­sion, be­tween the love of the Fa­ther and the love of the Son.

• God is love

8:4.2God is love, the Son is mercy, the Spirit is min­istry—the min­istry of di­vine love and end­less mercy to all in­tel­li­gent cre­ation. The Spirit is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the Fa­ther’s love and the Son’s mercy; in him are they eter­nally united for uni­ver­sal ser­vice. The Spirit is love ap­plied to the crea­ture cre­ation, the com­bined love of the Fa­ther and the Son.

• fully perceived, is coincident with divine justice

10:6.18Jus­tice is the col­lec­tive thought of righ­teous­ness; mercy is its per­sonal ex­pres­sion. Mercy is the at­ti­tude of love; pre­ci­sion char­ac­ter­izes the op­er­a­tion of law; di­vine judg­ment is the soul of fair­ness, ever con­form­ing to the jus­tice of the Trin­ity, ever ful­fill­ing the di­vine love of God. When fully per­ceived and com­pletely un­der­stood, the righ­teous jus­tice of the Trin­ity and the mer­ci­ful love of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther are co­in­ci­dent. But man has no such full un­der­stand­ing of di­vine jus­tice. Thus in the Trin­ity, as man would view it, the per­son­al­i­ties of Fa­ther, Son, and Spirit are ad­justed to co-or­di­nate min­istry of love and law in the ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­verses of time.

• portrays transcendent value of each personality

12:7.9The love of the Fa­ther ab­so­lutely in­di­vid­u­al­izes each per­son­al­ity as a unique child of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, a child with­out du­pli­cate in in­fin­ity, a will crea­ture ir­re­place­able in all eter­nity. The Fa­ther’s love glo­ri­fies each child of God, il­lu­mi­nat­ing each mem­ber of the ce­les­tial fam­ily, sharply sil­hou­et­ting the unique na­ture of each per­sonal be­ing against the im­per­sonal lev­els that lie out­side the fra­ter­nal cir­cuit of the Fa­ther of all. The love of God strik­ingly por­trays the tran­scen­dent value of each will crea­ture, un­mis­tak­ably re­veals the high value which the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has placed upon each and ev­ery one of his chil­dren from the high­est cre­ator per­son­al­ity of Par­a­dise sta­tus to the low­est per­son­al­ity of will dig­nity among the sav­age tribes of men in the dawn of the hu­man species on some evo­lu­tion­ary world of time and space.

• effect › brings universal brotherhood into being

12:7.10This very love of God for the in­di­vid­ual brings into be­ing the di­vine fam­ily of all in­di­vid­u­als, the uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood of the free­will chil­dren of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. And this broth­er­hood, be­ing uni­ver­sal, is a re­la­tion­ship of the whole. Broth­er­hood, when uni­ver­sal, dis­closes not the each re­la­tion­ship, but the all re­la­tion­ship. Broth­er­hood is a re­al­ity of the to­tal and there­fore dis­closes qual­i­ties of the whole in con­tradis­tinc­tion to qual­i­ties of the part.

• is source of parental love

21:0.2In the vast work of or­ga­niz­ing, evolv­ing, and per­fect­ing a lo­cal uni­verse, these high Sons al­ways en­joy the sus­tain­ing ap­proval of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The re­la­tion­ship of the Cre­ator Sons with their Par­a­dise Fa­ther is touch­ing and su­perla­tive. No doubt the pro­found af­fec­tion of the De­ity par­ents for their di­vine progeny is the well­spring of that beau­ti­ful and well-nigh di­vine love which even mor­tal par­ents bear their chil­dren.

• seen in Father’s intrusting us with everything we might perform

32:4.10God is not a self-cen­tered per­son­al­ity; the Fa­ther freely dis­tributes him­self to his cre­ation and to his crea­tures. He lives and acts, not only in the De­i­ties, but also in his Sons, whom he in­trusts with the do­ing of ev­ery­thing that it is di­vinely pos­si­ble for them to do. The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has truly di­vested him­self of ev­ery func­tion which it is pos­si­ble for an­other be­ing to per­form. And this is just as true of mor­tal man as of the Cre­ator Son who rules in God’s stead at the head­quar­ters of a lo­cal uni­verse. Thus we be­hold the out­work­ing of the ideal and in­fi­nite love of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• fruit of the Spirit

34:6.13The con­scious­ness of the spirit dom­i­na­tion of a hu­man life is pres­ently at­tended by an in­creas­ing ex­hi­bi­tion of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Spirit in the life re­ac­tions of such a spirit-led mor­tal, “for the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suf­fer­ing, gen­tle­ness, good­ness, faith, meek­ness, and tem­per­ance.” Such spirit-guided and di­vinely il­lu­mi­nated mor­tals, while they yet tread the lowly paths of toil and in hu­man faith­ful­ness per­form the du­ties of their earthly as­sign­ments, have al­ready be­gun to dis­cern the lights of eter­nal life as they glim­mer on the far­away shores of an­other world; al­ready have they be­gun to com­pre­hend the re­al­ity of that in­spir­ing and com­fort­ing truth, “The king­dom of God is not meat and drink but righ­teous­ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” And through­out ev­ery trial and in the pres­ence of ev­ery hard­ship, spirit-born souls are sus­tained by that hope which tran­scends all fear be­cause the love of God is shed abroad in all hearts by the pres­ence of the di­vine Spirit.

• true, holy, unlimited, eternal, and unique

40:10.13Thus, in the fi­nal anal­y­sis, it would be hardly proper to use the words “greater” or “lesser” in con­trast­ing the des­tinies of the as­cend­ing or­ders of son­ship. Ev­ery such son of God shares the fa­ther­hood of God, and God loves each of his crea­ture sons alike; he is no more a re­specter of as­cen­dant des­tinies than is he of the crea­tures who may at­tain such des­tinies. The Fa­ther loves each of his sons, and that af­fec­tion is not less than true, holy, di­vine, un­lim­ited, eter­nal, and unique—a love be­stowed upon this son and upon that son, in­di­vid­u­ally, per­son­ally, and ex­clu­sively. And such a love ut­terly eclipses all other facts. Son­ship is the su­preme re­la­tion­ship of the crea­ture to the Cre­ator.

• effect › casts out all fear

48:6.8Even on Uran­tia they coun­sel the hu­man teach­ers of truth and righ­teous­ness to ad­here to the preach­ing of “the good­ness of God, which leads to re­pen­tance,” to pro­claim “the love of God, which casts out all fear.” Even so have these truths been de­clared on your world:

• God is love

54:4.6Su­preme jus­tice can act in­stantly when not re­strained by di­vine mercy. But the min­istry of mercy to the chil­dren of time and space al­ways pro­vides for this time lag, this sav­ing in­ter­val be­tween seed­time and har­vest. If the seed sow­ing is good, this in­ter­val pro­vides for the test­ing and up­build­ing of char­ac­ter; if the seed sow­ing is evil, this mer­ci­ful de­lay pro­vides time for re­pen­tance and rec­ti­fi­ca­tion. This time de­lay in the ad­ju­di­ca­tion and ex­e­cu­tion of evil­do­ers is in­her­ent in the mercy min­istry of the seven super­uni­verses. This re­straint of jus­tice by mercy proves that God is love, and that such a God of love dom­i­nates the uni­verses and in mercy con­trols the fate and judg­ment of all his crea­tures.

54:6.1What­ever the dif­fi­cul­ties evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals may en­counter in their ef­forts to un­der­stand the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion, it should be clear to all re­flec­tive thinkers that the tech­nique of deal­ing with the rebels is a vin­di­ca­tion of di­vine love. The lov­ing mercy ex­tended to the rebels does seem to have in­volved many in­no­cent be­ings in tri­als and tribu­la­tions, but all these dis­traught per­son­al­i­ties may se­curely de­pend upon the all-wise Judges to ad­ju­di­cate their des­tinies in mercy as well as jus­tice.

54:6.2In all their deal­ings with in­tel­li­gent be­ings, both the Cre­ator Son and his Par­a­dise Fa­ther are love dom­i­nated. It is im­pos­si­ble to com­pre­hend many phases of the at­ti­tude of the uni­verse rulers to­ward rebels and re­bel­lion—sin and sin­ners—un­less it be re­mem­bered that God as a Fa­ther takes prece­dence over all other phases of De­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion in all the deal­ings of di­vin­ity with hu­man­ity. It should also be re­called that the Par­a­dise Cre­ator Sons are all mercy mo­ti­vated.

54:6.3If an af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther of a large fam­ily chooses to show mercy to one of his chil­dren guilty of griev­ous wrong­do­ing, it may well be that the ex­ten­sion of mercy to this mis­be­hav­ing child will work a tem­po­rary hard­ship upon all the other and well-be­haved chil­dren. Such even­tu­al­i­ties are in­ev­i­ta­ble; such a risk is in­sep­a­ra­ble from the re­al­ity sit­u­a­tion of hav­ing a lov­ing par­ent and of be­ing a mem­ber of a fam­ily group. Each mem­ber of a fam­ily prof­its by the righ­teous con­duct of ev­ery other mem­ber; like­wise must each mem­ber suf­fer the im­me­di­ate time-con­se­quences of the mis­con­duct of ev­ery other mem­ber. Fam­i­lies, groups, na­tions, races, worlds, sys­tems, con­stel­la­tions, and uni­verses are re­la­tion­ships of as­so­ci­a­tion which pos­sess in­di­vid­u­al­ity; and there­fore does ev­ery mem­ber of any such group, large or small, reap the ben­e­fits and suf­fer the con­se­quences of the right­do­ing and the wrong­do­ing of all other mem­bers of the group con­cerned.

54:6.4But one thing should be made clear: If you are made to suf­fer the evil con­se­quences of the sin of some mem­ber of your fam­ily, some fel­low cit­i­zen or fel­low mor­tal, even re­bel­lion in the sys­tem or else­where—no mat­ter what you may have to en­dure be­cause of the wrong­do­ing of your as­so­ciates, fel­lows, or su­pe­ri­ors—you may rest se­cure in the eter­nal as­sur­ance that such tribu­la­tions are tran­sient af­flic­tions. None of these fra­ter­nal con­se­quences of mis­be­hav­ior in the group can ever jeop­ar­dize your eter­nal prospects or in the least de­gree de­prive you of your di­vine right of Par­a­dise as­cen­sion and God at­tain­ment.

54:6.5And there is com­pen­sa­tion for these tri­als, de­lays, and dis­ap­point­ments which in­vari­ably ac­com­pany the sin of re­bel­lion. Of the many valu­able reper­cus­sions of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion which might be named, I will only call at­ten­tion to the en­hanced ca­reers of those mor­tal as­cend­ers, the Je­ru­sem cit­i­zens, who, by with­stand­ing the soph­ist­ries of sin, placed them­selves in line for be­com­ing fu­ture Mighty Mes­sen­gers, fel­lows of my own or­der. Ev­ery be­ing who stood the test of that evil episode thereby im­me­di­ately ad­vanced his ad­min­is­tra­tive sta­tus and en­hanced his spir­i­tual worth.

54:6.6At first the Lu­cifer up­heaval ap­peared to be an un­mit­i­gated calamity to the sys­tem and to the uni­verse. Grad­u­ally ben­e­fits be­gan to ac­crue. With the pass­ing of twenty-five thou­sand years of sys­tem time (twenty thou­sand years of Uran­tia time), the Mel­chiz­e­deks be­gan to teach that the good re­sult­ing from Lu­cifer’s folly had come to equal the evil in­curred. The sum of evil had by that time be­come al­most sta­tion­ary, con­tin­u­ing to in­crease only on cer­tain iso­lated worlds, while the ben­e­fi­cial reper­cus­sions con­tin­ued to mul­ti­ply and ex­tend out through the uni­verse and super­uni­verse, even to Ha­vona. The Mel­chiz­e­deks now teach that the good re­sult­ing from the Sa­ta­nia re­bel­lion is more than a thou­sand times the sum of all the evil.

54:6.7But such an ex­traor­di­nary and benef­i­cent har­vest of wrong­do­ing could only be brought about by the wise, di­vine, and mer­ci­ful at­ti­tude of all of Lu­cifer’s su­pe­ri­ors, ex­tend­ing from the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers on Eden­tia to the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther on Par­a­dise. The pass­ing of time has en­hanced the con­se­quen­tial good to be de­rived from the Lu­cifer folly; and since the evil to be pe­nal­ized was quite fully de­vel­oped within a com­par­a­tively short time, it is ap­par­ent that the all-wise and farsee­ing uni­verse rulers would be cer­tain to ex­tend the time in which to reap in­creas­ingly ben­e­fi­cial re­sults. Re­gard­less of the many ad­di­tional rea­sons for de­lay­ing the ap­pre­hen­sion and ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the Sa­ta­nia rebels, this one gain would have been enough to ex­plain why these sin­ners were not sooner in­terned, and why they have not been ad­ju­di­cated and de­stroyed.

54:6.8Short­sighted and time-bound mor­tal minds should be slow to crit­i­cize the time de­lays of the farsee­ing and all-wise ad­min­is­tra­tors of uni­verse af­fairs.

54:6.9One er­ror of hu­man think­ing re­spect­ing these prob­lems con­sists in the idea that all evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals on an evolv­ing planet would choose to en­ter upon the Par­a­dise ca­reer if sin had not cursed their world. The abil­ity to de­cline sur­vival does not date from the times of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. Mor­tal man has al­ways pos­sessed the en­dow­ment of free­will choice re­gard­ing the Par­a­dise ca­reer.

54:6.10As you as­cend in the sur­vival ex­pe­ri­ence, you will broaden your uni­verse con­cepts and ex­tend your hori­zon of mean­ings and val­ues; and thus will you be able the bet­ter to un­der­stand why such be­ings as Lu­cifer and Sa­tan are per­mit­ted to con­tinue in re­bel­lion. You will also bet­ter com­pre­hend how ul­ti­mate (if not im­me­di­ate) good can be de­rived from time-lim­ited evil. Af­ter you at­tain Par­a­dise, you will re­ally be en­light­ened and com­forted when you lis­ten to the super­aphic philoso­phers dis­cuss and ex­plain these pro­found prob­lems of uni­verse ad­just­ment. But even then, I doubt that you will be fully sat­is­fied in your own minds. At least I was not even when I had thus at­tained the acme of uni­verse phi­los­o­phy. I did not achieve a full com­pre­hen­sion of these com­plex­i­ties un­til af­ter I had been as­signed to ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ties in the super­uni­verse, where by ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence I have ac­quired con­cep­tual ca­pac­ity ad­e­quate for the com­pre­hen­sion of such many-sided prob­lems in cos­mic eq­uity and spir­i­tual phi­los­o­phy. As you as­cend Par­adis­e­ward, you will in­creas­ingly learn that many prob­lem­atic fea­tures of uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion can only be com­pre­hended sub­se­quent to the ac­quire­ment of in­creased ex­pe­ri­en­tial ca­pac­ity and to the achieve­ment of en­hanced spir­i­tual in­sight. Cos­mic wis­dom is es­sen­tial to the un­der­stand­ing of cos­mic sit­u­a­tions.

54:6.11[Pre­sented by a Mighty Mes­sen­ger of ex­pe­ri­en­tial sur­vival in the first sys­tem re­bel­lion in the uni­verses of time now at­tached to the super­uni­verse gov­ern­ment of Or­von­ton and act­ing in this mat­ter by re­quest of Ga­briel of Sal­ving­ton.]

• sum total of truth, beauty, and goodness

56:10.17Uni­ver­sal beauty is the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­flec­tion of the Isle of Par­a­dise in the ma­te­rial cre­ation, while eter­nal truth is the spe­cial min­istry of the Par­a­dise Sons who not only be­stow them­selves upon the mor­tal races but even pour out their Spirit of Truth upon all peo­ples. Di­vine good­ness is more fully shown forth in the lov­ing min­istry of the man­i­fold per­son­al­i­ties of the In­fi­nite Spirit. But love, the sum to­tal of these three qual­i­ties, is man’s per­cep­tion of God as his spirit Fa­ther.

56:10.18Phys­i­cal mat­ter is the time-space shadow of the Par­a­dise en­ergy-shin­ing of the ab­so­lute De­i­ties. Truth mean­ings are the mor­tal-in­tel­lect reper­cus­sions of the eter­nal word of De­ity—the time-space com­pre­hen­sion of su­preme con­cepts. The good­ness val­ues of di­vin­ity are the mer­ci­ful min­istries of the spirit per­son­al­i­ties of the Uni­ver­sal, the Eter­nal, and the In­fi­nite to the time-space fi­nite crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary spheres.

56:10.19These mean­ing­ful re­al­ity val­ues of di­vin­ity are blended in the Fa­ther’s re­la­tion with each per­sonal crea­ture as di­vine love. They are co-or­di­nated in the Son and his Sons as di­vine mercy. They man­i­fest their qual­i­ties through the Spirit and his spirit chil­dren as di­vine min­istry, the por­trayal of lov­ing mercy to the chil­dren of time. These three di­vini­ties are pri­mar­ily man­i­fested by the Su­preme Be­ing as power-per­son­al­ity syn­the­sis. They are var­i­ously shown forth by God the Sev­en­fold in seven dif­fer­ing as­so­ci­a­tions of di­vine mean­ings and val­ues on seven as­cend­ing lev­els.

• God is love
• greatest of all spirit realities

56:10.20To fi­nite man truth, beauty, and good­ness em­brace the full rev­e­la­tion of di­vin­ity re­al­ity. As this love-com­pre­hen­sion of De­ity finds spir­i­tual ex­pres­sion in the lives of God-know­ing mor­tals, there are yielded the fruits of di­vin­ity: in­tel­lec­tual peace, so­cial prog­ress, moral sat­is­fac­tion, spir­i­tual joy, and cos­mic wis­dom. The ad­vanced mor­tals on a world in the sev­enth stage of light and life have learned that love is the great­est thing in the uni­verse—and they know that God is love.

• desire to do good to others

56:10.21Love is the de­sire to do good to oth­ers.

• essence of Jesus’ teaching

92:4.84. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. Christ Mi­chael pre­sented for the fourth time to Uran­tia the con­cept of God as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, and this teach­ing has gen­er­ally per­sisted ever since. The essence of his teach­ing was love and ser­vice, the lov­ing wor­ship which a crea­ture son vol­un­tar­ily gives in rec­og­ni­tion of, and re­sponse to, the lov­ing min­istry of God his Fa­ther; the free­will ser­vice which such crea­ture sons be­stow upon their breth­ren in the joy­ous re­al­iza­tion that in this ser­vice they are like­wise serv­ing God the Fa­ther.

• effect › infectious; more catching than hate

100:4.6You can­not truly love your fel­lows by a mere act of the will. Love is only born of thor­ough­go­ing un­der­stand­ing of your neigh­bor’s mo­tives and sen­ti­ments. It is not so im­por­tant to love all men to­day as it is that each day you learn to love one more hu­man be­ing. If each day or each week you achieve an un­der­stand­ing of one more of your fel­lows, and if this is the limit of your abil­ity, then you are cer­tainly so­cial­iz­ing and truly spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing your per­son­al­ity. Love is in­fec­tious, and when hu­man de­vo­tion is in­tel­li­gent and wise, love is more catch­ing than hate. But only gen­uine and un­selfish love is truly con­ta­gious. If each mor­tal could only be­come a fo­cus of dy­namic af­fec­tion, this be­nign virus of love would soon per­vade the sen­ti­men­tal emo­tion-stream of hu­man­ity to such an ex­tent that all civ­i­liza­tion would be en­com­passed by love, and that would be the re­al­iza­tion of the broth­er­hood of man.

• essence of religion; wellspring of civilization

102:6.3The re­li­gion­ist of philo­sophic at­tain­ment has faith in a per­sonal God of per­sonal sal­va­tion, some­thing more than a re­al­ity, a value, a level of achieve­ment, an ex­alted pro­cess, a trans­mu­ta­tion, the ul­ti­mate of time-space, an ide­al­iza­tion, the per­son­al­iza­tion of en­ergy, the en­tity of grav­ity, a hu­man pro­jec­tion, the ide­al­iza­tion of self, na­ture’s up­thrust, the in­cli­na­tion to good­ness, the for­ward im­pulse of evo­lu­tion, or a sub­lime hy­poth­e­sis. The re­li­gion­ist has faith in a God of love. Love is the essence of re­li­gion and the well­spring of su­pe­rior civ­i­liza­tion.

• flows outward to creation through the Supreme

117:6.3What Mi­chael is to Neb­a­don, the Su­preme is to the fi­nite cos­mos; his De­ity is the great av­enue through which the love of the Fa­ther flows out­ward to all cre­ation, and he is the great av­enue through which fi­nite crea­tures pass in­ward in their quest of the Fa­ther, who is love. Even Thought Ad­justers are re­lated to him; in orig­i­nal na­ture and di­vin­ity they are like the Fa­ther, but when they ex­pe­ri­ence the trans­ac­tions of time in the uni­verses of space, they be­come like the Su­preme.

• appears in mortal personality by ministry of Adjuster
• circuit is from Father, through Sons to brothers, to Supreme
• from God

117:6.10All true love is from God, and man re­ceives the di­vine af­fec­tion as he him­self be­stows this love upon his fel­lows. Love is dy­namic. It can never be cap­tured; it is alive, free, thrilling, and al­ways mov­ing. Man can never take the love of the Fa­ther and im­prison it within his heart. The Fa­ther’s love can be­come real to mor­tal man only by pass­ing through that man’s per­son­al­ity as he in turn be­stows this love upon his fel­lows. The great cir­cuit of love is from the Fa­ther, through sons to broth­ers, and hence to the Su­preme. The love of the Fa­ther ap­pears in the mor­tal per­son­al­ity by the min­istry of the in­dwelling Ad­juster. Such a God-know­ing son re­veals this love to his uni­verse breth­ren, and this fra­ter­nal af­fec­tion is the essence of the love of the Su­preme.

• not shortsighted affection which pampers, spoils

118:10.1Prov­i­dence does not mean that God has de­cided all things for us and in ad­vance. God loves us too much to do that, for that would be noth­ing short of cos­mic tyranny. Man does have rel­a­tive pow­ers of choice. Nei­ther is the di­vine love that short­sighted af­fec­tion which would pam­per and spoil the chil­dren of men.

• effect › operates directly in heart of individual

118:10.11The love of the Fa­ther op­er­ates di­rectly in the heart of the in­di­vid­ual, in­de­pen­dent of the ac­tions or re­ac­tions of all other in­di­vid­u­als; the re­la­tion­ship is per­sonal—man and God. The im­per­sonal pres­ence of De­ity (Al­mighty Su­preme and Par­a­dise Trin­ity) man­i­fests re­gard for the whole, not for the part. The prov­i­dence of the over­con­trol of Su­prem­acy be­comes in­creas­ingly ap­par­ent as the suc­ces­sive parts of the uni­verse pro­gress in the at­tain­ment of fi­nite des­tinies. As the sys­tems, con­stel­la­tions, uni­verses, and super­uni­verses be­come set­tled in light and life, the Su­preme in­creas­ingly emerges as the mean­ing­ful cor­re­la­tor of all that is tran­spir­ing, while the Ul­ti­mate grad­u­ally emerges as the tran­scen­den­tal uni­fier of all things.

• God is love

130:1.5Je­sus’ last visit with Ga­diah had to do with a dis­cus­sion of good and evil. This young Phil­is­tine was much trou­bled by a feel­ing of in­jus­tice be­cause of the pres­ence of evil in the world along­side the good. He said: “How can God, if he is in­finitely good, per­mit us to suf­fer the sor­rows of evil; af­ter all, who cre­ates evil?” It was still be­lieved by many in those days that God cre­ates both good and evil, but Je­sus never taught such er­ror. In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, Je­sus said: “My brother, God is love; there­fore he must be good, and his good­ness is so great and real that it can­not con­tain the small and un­real things of evil. God is so pos­i­tively good that there is ab­so­lutely no place in him for neg­a­tive evil. Evil is the im­ma­ture choos­ing and the un­think­ing mis­step of those who are re­sis­tant to good­ness, re­ject­ful of beauty, and dis­loyal to truth. Evil is only the mis­adap­ta­tion of im­ma­tu­rity or the dis­rup­tive and dis­tort­ing in­flu­ence of ig­no­rance. Evil is the in­ev­i­ta­ble dark­ness which fol­lows upon the heels of the un­wise re­jec­tion of light. Evil is that which is dark and un­true, and which, when con­sciously em­braced and will­fully en­dorsed, be­comes sin.

• God is love

134:4.1The broth­er­hood of men is founded on the fa­ther­hood of God. The fam­ily of God is de­rived from the love of God—God is love. God the Fa­ther di­vinely loves his chil­dren, all of them.

• credential of Jesus’ mission

137:6.5Je­sus in­structed them to take up their reg­u­lar du­ties un­til “the hour of the king­dom comes.” And to en­cour­age them, he set an ex­am­ple by go­ing back reg­u­larly to work in the boat­shop. In ex­plain­ing that they should spend three hours ev­ery evening in study and prepa­ra­tion for their fu­ture work, Je­sus fur­ther said: “We will all re­main here­about un­til the Fa­ther bids me call you. Each of you must now re­turn to his ac­cus­tomed work just as if noth­ing had hap­pened. Tell no man about me and re­mem­ber that my king­dom is not to come with noise and glamor, but rather must it come through the great change which my Fa­ther will have wrought in your hearts and in the hearts of those who shall be called to join you in the coun­cils of the king­dom. You are now my friends; I trust you and I love you; you are soon to be­come my per­sonal as­so­ciates. Be pa­tient, be gen­tle. Be ever obe­di­ent to the Fa­ther’s will. Make your­selves ready for the call of the king­dom. While you will ex­pe­ri­ence great joy in the ser­vice of my Fa­ther, you should also be pre­pared for trou­ble, for I warn you that it will be only through much tribu­la­tion that many will en­ter the king­dom. But those who have found the king­dom, their joy will be full, and they shall be called the blest of all the earth. But do not en­ter­tain false hope; the world will stum­ble at my words. Even you, my friends, do not fully per­ceive what I am un­fold­ing to your con­fused minds. Make no mis­take; we go forth to la­bor for a gen­er­a­tion of sign seek­ers. They will de­mand won­der-work­ing as the proof that I am sent by my Fa­ther, and they will be slow to rec­og­nize in the rev­e­la­tion of my Fa­ther’s love the cre­den­tials of my mis­sion.”

• effect › requires us to love as Jesus loves us

140:5.2Je­sus loves man­kind with a dual af­fec­tion. He lived on earth as a two­fold per­son­al­ity—hu­man and di­vine. As the Son of God he loves man with a fa­therly love—he is man’s Cre­ator, his uni­verse Fa­ther. As the Son of Man, Je­sus loves mor­tals as a brother—he was truly a man among men.

• effect › requires us to love as Jesus loves us

140:5.3Je­sus did not ex­pect his fol­low­ers to achieve an im­pos­si­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of broth­erly love, but he did ex­pect them to so strive to be like God—to be per­fect even as the Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect—that they could be­gin to look upon man as God looks upon his crea­tures and there­fore could be­gin to love men as God loves them—to show forth the be­gin­nings of a fa­therly af­fec­tion. In the course of these ex­hor­ta­tions to the twelve apos­tles, Je­sus sought to re­veal this new con­cept of fa­therly love as it is re­lated to cer­tain emo­tional at­ti­tudes con­cerned in mak­ing nu­mer­ous en­vi­ron­men­tal so­cial ad­just­ments.

• always looks for the best

140:5.124. “Happy are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Spir­i­tual pu­rity is not a neg­a­tive qual­ity, ex­cept that it does lack sus­pi­cion and re­venge. In dis­cussing pu­rity, Je­sus did not in­tend to deal ex­clu­sively with hu­man sex at­ti­tudes. He re­ferred more to that faith which man should have in his fel­low man; that faith which a par­ent has in his child, and which en­ables him to love his fel­lows even as a fa­ther would love them. A fa­ther’s love need not pam­per, and it does not con­done evil, but it is al­ways an­ti­cyn­i­cal. Fa­therly love has sin­gle­ness of pur­pose, and it al­ways looks for the best in man; that is the at­ti­tude of a true par­ent.

• 4 reactions of fatherly love

140:5.15And then Je­sus went on to in­struct his fol­low­ers in the re­al­iza­tion of the chief pur­pose of all hu­man strug­gling—per­fec­tion—even di­vine at­tain­ment. Al­ways he ad­mon­ished them: “Be you per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.” He did not ex­hort the twelve to love their neigh­bors as they loved them­selves. That would have been a wor­thy achieve­ment; it would have in­di­cated the achieve­ment of broth­erly love. He rather ad­mon­ished his apos­tles to love men as he had loved them—to love with a fa­therly as well as a broth­erly af­fec­tion. And he il­lus­trated this by point­ing out four su­preme re­ac­tions of fa­therly love:

140:5.161. “Happy are they who mourn, for they shall be com­forted.” So-called com­mon sense or the best of logic would never sug­gest that hap­pi­ness could be de­rived from mourn­ing. But Je­sus did not re­fer to out­ward or os­ten­ta­tious mourn­ing. He al­luded to an emo­tional at­ti­tude of ten­der­heart­ed­ness. It is a great er­ror to teach boys and young men that it is un­manly to show ten­der­ness or oth­er­wise to give ev­i­dence of emo­tional feel­ing or phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing. Sym­pa­thy is a wor­thy at­tri­bute of the male as well as the fe­male. It is not nec­es­sary to be cal­loused in or­der to be manly. This is the wrong way to cre­ate coura­geous men. The world’s great men have not been afraid to mourn. Moses, the mourner, was a greater man than ei­ther Sam­son or Go­liath. Moses was a su­perb leader, but he was also a man of meek­ness. Be­ing sen­si­tive and re­spon­sive to hu­man need cre­ates gen­uine and last­ing hap­pi­ness, while such kindly at­ti­tudes safe­guard the soul from the de­struc­tive in­flu­ences of anger, hate, and sus­pi­cion.

140:5.172. “Happy are the mer­ci­ful, for they shall ob­tain mercy.” Mercy here de­notes the height and depth and breadth of the truest friend­ship—lov­ing-kind­ness. Mercy some­times may be pas­sive, but here it is ac­tive and dy­namic—su­preme fa­ther­li­ness. A lov­ing par­ent ex­pe­ri­ences lit­tle dif­fi­culty in for­giv­ing his child, even many times. And in an un­spoiled child the urge to re­lieve suf­fer­ing is nat­u­ral. Chil­dren are nor­mally kind and sym­pa­thetic when old enough to ap­pre­ci­ate ac­tual con­di­tions.

140:5.183. “Happy are the peace­mak­ers, for they shall be called the sons of God.” Je­sus’ hear­ers were long­ing for mil­i­tary de­liv­er­ance, not for peace­mak­ers. But Je­sus’ peace is not of the pa­cific and neg­a­tive kind. In the face of tri­als and per­se­cu­tions he said, “My peace I leave with you.” “Let not your heart be trou­bled, nei­ther let it be afraid.” This is the peace that pre­vents ru­inous con­flicts. Per­sonal peace in­te­grates per­son­al­ity. So­cial peace pre­vents fear, greed, and anger. Po­lit­i­cal peace pre­vents race an­tag­o­nisms, na­tional sus­pi­cions, and war. Peace­mak­ing is the cure of dis­trust and sus­pi­cion.

140:5.19Chil­dren can eas­ily be taught to func­tion as peace­mak­ers. They en­joy team ac­tiv­i­ties; they like to play to­gether. Said the Mas­ter at an­other time: “Whoso­ever will save his life shall lose it, but whoso­ever will lose his life shall find it.”

140:5.204. “Happy are they who are per­se­cuted for righ­teous­ness’ sake, for theirs is the king­dom of heaven. Happy are you when men shall re­vile you and per­se­cute you and shall say all man­ner of evil against you falsely. Re­joice and be ex­ceed­ingly glad, for great is your re­ward in heaven.”

140:5.21So of­ten per­se­cu­tion does fol­low peace. But young peo­ple and brave adults never shun dif­fi­culty or dan­ger. “Greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friends.” And a fa­therly love can freely do all these things—things which broth­erly love can hardly en­com­pass. And prog­ress has al­ways been the fi­nal har­vest of per­se­cu­tion.

140:5.22Chil­dren al­ways re­spond to the chal­lenge of cour­age. Youth is ever will­ing to “take a dare.” And ev­ery child should early learn to sac­ri­fice.

140:5.23And so it is re­vealed that the beat­i­tudes of the Ser­mon on the Mount are based on faith and love and not on law—ethics and duty.

• sum total of truth, beauty, and goodness

140:8.31The Mas­ter of­fered no so­lu­tions for the non­re­li­gious prob­lems of his own age nor for any sub­se­quent age. Je­sus wished to de­velop spir­i­tual in­sight into eter­nal re­al­i­ties and to stim­u­late ini­tia­tive in the orig­i­nal­ity of liv­ing; he con­cerned him­self ex­clu­sively with the un­der­ly­ing and per­ma­nent spir­i­tual needs of the hu­man race. He re­vealed a good­ness equal to God. He ex­alted love—truth, beauty, and good­ness—as the di­vine ideal and the eter­nal re­al­ity.

• evidence of spiritual rebirth

142:5.4“Said the Prophet Isa­iah, speak­ing of these times: ‘When the spirit is poured upon us from on high, then shall the work of righ­teous­ness be­come peace, quiet­ness, and as­sur­ance for­ever.’ And for all who truly be­lieve this gospel, I will be­come surety for their re­cep­tion into the eter­nal mer­cies and the ev­er­last­ing life of my Fa­ther’s king­dom. You, then, who hear this mes­sage and be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom are the sons of God, and you have life ev­er­last­ing; and the ev­i­dence to all the world that you have been born of the spirit is that you sin­cerely love one an­other.”

• greatest of all spirit realities
• has severe disciplines

143:1.4“I have come into this world to do the will of my Fa­ther and to re­veal his lov­ing char­ac­ter to all man­kind. That, my breth­ren, is my mis­sion. And this one thing I will do, re­gard­less of the mis­un­der­stand­ing of my teach­ings by Jews or gen­tiles of this day or of an­other gen­er­a­tion. But you should not over­look the fact that even di­vine love has its se­vere dis­ci­plines. A fa­ther’s love for his son of­ten­times im­pels the fa­ther to re­strain the un­wise acts of his thought­less off­spring. The child does not al­ways com­pre­hend the wise and lov­ing mo­tives of the fa­ther’s re­strain­ing dis­ci­pline. But I de­clare to you that my Fa­ther in Par­a­dise does rule a uni­verse of uni­verses by the com­pelling power of his love. Love is the great­est of all spirit re­al­i­ties. Truth is a lib­er­at­ing rev­e­la­tion, but love is the su­preme re­la­tion­ship. And no mat­ter what blun­ders your fel­low men make in their world man­age­ment of to­day, in an age to come the gospel which I de­clare to you will rule this very world. The ul­ti­mate goal of hu­man prog­ress is the rev­er­ent rec­og­ni­tion of the fa­ther­hood of God and the lov­ing ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion of the broth­er­hood of man.

• evidence of spiritual rebirth

143:2.3“Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, he who rules his own self is greater than he who cap­tures a city. Self-mas­tery is the mea­sure of man’s moral na­ture and the in­di­ca­tor of his spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. In the old or­der you fasted and prayed; as the new crea­ture of the re­birth of the spirit, you are taught to be­lieve and re­joice. In the Fa­ther’s king­dom you are to be­come new crea­tures; old things are to pass away; be­hold I show you how all things are to be­come new. And by your love for one an­other you are to con­vince the world that you have passed from bond­age to lib­erty, from death into life ev­er­last­ing.

• doubt not Father’s l.

143:2.7“Your son­ship is grounded in faith, and you are to re­main un­moved by fear. Your joy is born of trust in the di­vine word, and you shall not there­fore be led to doubt the re­al­ity of the Fa­ther’s love and mercy. It is the very good­ness of God that leads men into true and gen­uine re­pen­tance. Your se­cret of the mas­tery of self is bound up with your faith in the in­dwelling spirit, which ever works by love. Even this sav­ing faith you have not of your­selves; it also is the gift of God. And if you are the chil­dren of this liv­ing faith, you are no longer the bond­slaves of self but rather the tri­umphant mas­ters of your­selves, the lib­er­ated sons of God.

• greatest of all spirit realities

143:6.4The theme of Je­sus’ teach­ing on Mount Ger­izim was: That he wants all men to see God as a Fa­ther-friend just as he (Je­sus) is a brother-friend. And again and again he im­pressed upon them that love is the great­est re­la­tion­ship in the world—in the uni­verse—just as truth is the great­est pro­nounce­ment of the ob­ser­va­tion of these di­vine re­la­tion­ships.

• evidence of spiritual rebirth

146:3.6“While you can­not ob­serve the di­vine spirit at work in your minds, there is a prac­ti­cal method of dis­cov­er­ing the de­gree to which you have yielded the con­trol of your soul pow­ers to the teach­ing and guid­ance of this in­dwelling spirit of the heav­enly Fa­ther, and that is the de­gree of your love for your fel­low men. This spirit of the Fa­ther par­takes of the love of the Fa­ther, and as it dom­i­nates man, it un­fail­ingly leads in the di­rec­tions of di­vine wor­ship and lov­ing re­gard for one’s fel­lows. At first you be­lieve that you are sons of God be­cause my teach­ing has made you more con­scious of the in­ner lead­ings of our Fa­ther’s in­dwelling pres­ence; but pres­ently the Spirit of Truth shall be poured out upon all flesh, and it will live among men and teach all men, even as I now live among you and speak to you the words of truth. And this Spirit of Truth, speak­ing for the spir­i­tual en­dow­ments of your souls, will help you to know that you are the sons of God. It will un­fail­ingly bear wit­ness with the Fa­ther’s in­dwelling pres­ence, your spirit, then dwell­ing in all men as it now dwells in some, telling you that you are in re­al­ity the sons of God.

• never self-seeking, cannot be self-bestowed

156:5.11You are des­tined to live a nar­row and mean life if you learn to love only those who love you. Hu­man love may in­deed be re­cip­ro­cal, but di­vine love is out­go­ing in all its sat­is­fac­tion-seek­ing. The less of love in any crea­ture’s na­ture, the greater the love need, and the more does di­vine love seek to sat­isfy such need. Love is never self-seek­ing, and it can­not be self-be­stowed. Di­vine love can­not be self-con­tained; it must be un­selfishly be­stowed.

• God is love

160:5.11Now are we truly for­sak­ing the lures of the known or­der of ex­is­tence while we un­re­servedly ded­i­cate our quest to the lures of the un­known and un­ex­plored or­der of the ex­is­tence of a fu­ture life of ad­ven­ture in the spirit worlds of the higher ide­al­ism of di­vine re­al­ity. And we seek for those sym­bols of mean­ing where­with to con­vey to our fel­low men these con­cepts of the re­al­ity of the ide­al­ism of the re­li­gion of Je­sus, and we will not cease to pray for that day when all man­kind shall be thrilled by the com­mu­nal vi­sion of this su­preme truth. Just now, our fo­cal­ized con­cept of the Fa­ther, as held in our hearts, is that God is spirit; as con­veyed to our fel­lows, that God is love.

• outworking of divine urge of life

174:1.5“Your in­abil­ity or un­will­ing­ness to for­give your fel­lows is the mea­sure of your im­ma­tu­rity, your fail­ure to at­tain adult sym­pa­thy, un­der­stand­ing, and love. You hold grudges and nurse venge­ful­ness in di­rect pro­por­tion to your ig­no­rance of the in­ner na­ture and true long­ings of your chil­dren and your fel­low be­ings. Love is the out­work­ing of the di­vine and in­ner urge of life. It is founded on un­der­stand­ing, nur­tured by un­selfish ser­vice, and per­fected in wis­dom.”

• made real by loving each other

180:4.5Je­sus looked down upon them all, smiled, and said: “My lit­tle chil­dren, I am go­ing away, go­ing back to my Fa­ther. In a lit­tle while you will not see me as you do here, as flesh and blood. In a very short time I am go­ing to send you my spirit, just like me ex­cept for this ma­te­rial body. This new teacher is the Spirit of Truth who will live with each one of you, in your hearts, and so will all the chil­dren of light be made one and be drawn to­ward one an­other. And in this very man­ner will my Fa­ther and I be able to live in the souls of each one of you and also in the hearts of all other men who love us and make that love real in their ex­pe­ri­ences by lov­ing one an­other, even as I am now lov­ing you.”

• grasping highest good of individual loved

180:5.10Love, un­selfish­ness, must un­dergo a con­stant and liv­ing readap­ta­tive in­ter­pre­ta­tion of re­la­tion­ships in ac­cor­dance with the lead­ing of the Spirit of Truth. Love must thereby grasp the ever-chang­ing and en­larg­ing con­cepts of the high­est cos­mic good of the in­di­vid­ual who is loved. And then love goes on to strike this same at­ti­tude con­cern­ing all other in­di­vid­u­als who could pos­si­bly be in­flu­enced by the grow­ing and liv­ing re­la­tion­ship of one spirit-led mor­tal’s love for other cit­i­zens of the uni­verse. And this en­tire liv­ing adap­ta­tion of love must be ef­fected in the light of both the en­vi­ron­ment of pres­ent evil and the eter­nal goal of the per­fec­tion of di­vine des­tiny.

• effect › requires us to love as Jesus loves us

181:2.30“But re­mem­ber my prom­ise: When I am raised up, I will tarry with you for a sea­son be­fore I go to the Fa­ther. And even this night will I make sup­pli­ca­tion to the Fa­ther that he strengthen each of you for that which you must now so soon pass through. I love you all with the love where­with the Fa­ther loves me, and there­fore should you hence­forth love one an­other, even as I have loved you.”

• not secondary to anything in God’s nature

188:4.8When once you grasp the idea of God as a true and lov­ing Fa­ther, the only con­cept which Je­sus ever taught, you must forth­with, in all con­sis­tency, ut­terly aban­don all those prim­i­tive no­tions about God as an of­fended monarch, a stern and all-pow­er­ful ruler whose chief de­light is to de­tect his sub­jects in wrong­do­ing and to see that they are ad­e­quately pun­ished, un­less some be­ing al­most equal to him­self should vol­un­teer to suf­fer for them, to die as a sub­sti­tute and in their stead. The whole idea of ran­som and atone­ment is in­com­pat­i­ble with the con­cept of God as it was taught and ex­em­pli­fied by Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. The in­fi­nite love of God is not sec­ondary to any­thing in the di­vine na­ture.

• effect › infectious; more catching than hate
• eternally creative

188:5.1The cross of Je­sus por­trays the full mea­sure of the su­preme de­vo­tion of the true shep­herd for even the un­wor­thy mem­bers of his flock. It for­ever places all re­la­tions be­tween God and man upon the fam­ily ba­sis. God is the Fa­ther; man is his son. Love, the love of a fa­ther for his son, be­comes the cen­tral truth in the uni­verse re­la­tions of Cre­ator and crea­ture—not the jus­tice of a king which seeks sat­is­fac­tion in the suf­fer­ings and pun­ish­ment of the evil-do­ing sub­ject.

• effect › destroys hate and sin, all weakness resulting therefrom

188:5.2The cross for­ever shows that the at­ti­tude of Je­sus to­ward sin­ners was nei­ther con­dem­na­tion nor con­do­na­tion, but rather eter­nal and lov­ing sal­va­tion. Je­sus is truly a sav­ior in the sense that his life and death do win men over to good­ness and righ­teous sur­vival. Je­sus loves men so much that his love awak­ens the re­sponse of love in the hu­man heart. Love is truly con­ta­gious and eter­nally cre­ative. Je­sus’ death on the cross ex­em­pli­fies a love which is suf­fi­ciently strong and di­vine to for­give sin and swal­low up all evil-do­ing. Je­sus dis­closed to this world a higher qual­ity of righ­teous­ness than jus­tice—mere tech­ni­cal right and wrong. Di­vine love does not merely for­give wrongs; it ab­sorbs and ac­tu­ally de­stroys them. The for­give­ness of love ut­terly tran­scends the for­give­ness of mercy. Mercy sets the guilt of evil-do­ing to one side; but love de­stroys for­ever the sin and all weak­ness re­sult­ing there­from. Je­sus brought a new method of liv­ing to Uran­tia. He taught us not to re­sist evil but to find through him a good­ness which ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroys evil. The for­give­ness of Je­sus is not con­do­na­tion; it is sal­va­tion from con­dem­na­tion. Sal­va­tion does not slight wrongs; it makes them right. True love does not com­pro­mise nor con­done hate; it de­stroys it. The love of Je­sus is never sat­is­fied with mere for­give­ness. The Mas­ter’s love im­plies re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, eter­nal sur­vival. It is al­to­gether proper to speak of sal­va­tion as re­demp­tion if you mean this eter­nal re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

188:5.3Je­sus, by the power of his per­sonal love for men, could break the hold of sin and evil. He thereby set men free to choose bet­ter ways of liv­ing. Je­sus por­trayed a de­liv­er­ance from the past which in it­self prom­ised a tri­umph for the fu­ture. For­give­ness thus pro­vided sal­va­tion. The beauty of di­vine love, once fully ad­mit­ted to the hu­man heart, for­ever de­stroys the charm of sin and the power of evil.

• greatest of all spirit realities

192:2.1When they had fin­ished break­fast, and while the oth­ers sat by the fire, Je­sus beck­oned to Pe­ter and to John that they should come with him for a stroll on the beach. As they walked along, Je­sus said to John, “John, do you love me?” And when John an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, with all my heart,” the Mas­ter said: “Then, John, give up your in­tol­er­ance and learn to love men as I have loved you. De­vote your life to prov­ing that love is the great­est thing in the world. It is the love of God that im­pels men to seek sal­va­tion. Love is the an­ces­tor of all spir­i­tual good­ness, the essence of the true and the beau­ti­ful.”

• true guide to real insight

195:5.14In re­li­gion, Je­sus ad­vo­cated and fol­lowed the method of ex­pe­ri­ence, even as mod­ern sci­ence pur­sues the tech­nique of ex­per­i­ment. We find God through the lead­ings of spir­i­tual in­sight, but we ap­proach this in­sight of the soul through the love of the beau­ti­ful, the pur­suit of truth, loy­alty to duty, and the wor­ship of di­vine good­ness. But of all these val­ues, love is the true guide to real in­sight.

• evidence of spiritual rebirth

196:3.71. Hu­man­i­tar­ian fel­low­ship—love. The purely an­i­mal mind may be gre­gar­i­ous for self-pro­tec­tion, but only the spirit-in­dwelt in­tel­lect is un­selfishly al­tru­is­tic and un­con­di­tion­ally lov­ing.

• appears in mortal personality by ministry of Adjuster

196:3.16Un­less a di­vine lover lived in man, he could not un­selfishly and spir­i­tu­ally love. Un­less an in­ter­preter lived in the mind, man could not truly re­al­ize the unity of the uni­verse. Un­less an eval­u­a­tor dwelt with man, he could not pos­si­bly ap­praise moral val­ues and rec­og­nize spir­i­tual mean­ings. And this lover hails from the very source of in­fi­nite love; this in­ter­preter is a part of Uni­ver­sal Unity; this eval­u­a­tor is the child of the Cen­ter and Source of all ab­so­lute val­ues of di­vine and eter­nal re­al­ity.

• greatest of all spirit realities

196:3.29Re­li­gious in­sight pos­sesses the power of turn­ing de­feat into higher de­sires and new de­ter­mi­na­tions. Love is the high­est mo­ti­va­tion which man may uti­lize in his uni­verse as­cent. But love, di­vested of truth, beauty, and good­ness, is only a sen­ti­ment, a philo­sophic dis­tor­tion, a psy­chic il­lu­sion, a spir­i­tual de­cep­tion. Love must al­ways be re­de­fined on suc­ces­sive lev­els of mor­ontia and spirit pro­gres­sion.

108:2.94. The spirit of broth­er­hood. Re­gard­less of the at­tain­ment of the psy­chic cir­cles and the as­sign­ment of per­sonal guard­i­ans—in the ab­sence of any­thing re­sem­bling a cri­sis de­ci­sion—when an evolv­ing mor­tal be­comes dom­i­nated by the love of his fel­lows and con­se­crated to un­selfish min­istry to his breth­ren in the flesh, the wait­ing Ad­juster un­vary­ingly de­scends to in­dwell the mind of such a mor­tal min­is­ter.

85:3.4The wor­ship of in­sects and other an­i­mals was pro­moted by a later mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the golden rule—do­ing to oth­ers (ev­ery form of life) as you would be done by. The an­cients once be­lieved that all winds were pro­duced by the wings of birds and there­fore both feared and wor­shiped all winged crea­tures. The early Nordics thought that eclipses were caused by a wolf that de­voured a por­tion of the sun or moon. The Hin­dus of­ten show Vishnu with a horse’s head. Many times an an­i­mal sym­bol stands for a for­got­ten god or a van­ished cult. Early in evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion the lamb be­came the typ­i­cal sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mal and the dove the sym­bol of peace and love.

42:11.1In the eval­u­a­tion and rec­og­ni­tion of mind it should be re­mem­bered that the uni­verse is nei­ther me­chan­i­cal nor mag­i­cal; it is a cre­ation of mind and a mech­a­nism of law. But while in prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tion the laws of na­ture op­er­ate in what seems to be the dual realms of the phys­i­cal and the spir­i­tual, in re­al­ity they are one. The First Source and Cen­ter is the pri­mal cause of all ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion and at the same time the first and fi­nal Fa­ther of all spir­its. The Par­a­dise Fa­ther ap­pears per­son­ally in the ex­tra-Ha­vona uni­verses only as pure en­ergy and pure spirit—as the Thought Ad­justers and other sim­i­lar frag­men­ta­tions.

104:2.3Through the rec­og­ni­tion of the Trin­ity con­cept the mind of man can hope to grasp some­thing of the in­ter­re­la­tion­ship of love and law in the time-space cre­ations. Through spir­i­tual faith man gains in­sight into the love of God but soon dis­cov­ers that this spir­i­tual faith has no in­flu­ence on the or­dained laws of the ma­te­rial uni­verse. Ir­re­spec­tive of the firm­ness of man’s be­lief in God as his Par­a­dise Fa­ther, ex­pand­ing cos­mic hori­zons de­mand that he also give rec­og­ni­tion to the re­al­ity of Par­a­dise De­ity as uni­ver­sal law, that he rec­og­nize the Trin­ity sov­er­eignty ex­tend­ing out­ward from Par­a­dise and over­shad­ow­ing even the evolv­ing lo­cal uni­verses of the Cre­ator Sons and Cre­ative Daugh­ters of the three eter­nal per­sons whose de­ity union is the fact and re­al­ity and eter­nal in­di­vis­i­bil­ity of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity.

111:6.6Sci­ence is the source of facts, and mind can­not op­er­ate with­out facts. They are the build­ing blocks in the con­struc­tion of wis­dom which are ce­mented to­gether by life ex­pe­ri­ence. Man can find the love of God with­out facts, and man can dis­cover the laws of God with­out love, but man can never be­gin to ap­pre­ci­ate the in­fi­nite sym­me­try, the su­per­nal har­mony, the ex­qui­site re­plete­ness of the all-in­clu­sive na­ture of the First Source and Cen­ter un­til he has found di­vine law and di­vine love and has ex­pe­ri­en­tially uni­fied these in his own evolv­ing cos­mic phi­los­o­phy.

157:2.2When Je­sus had thus spo­ken, he with­drew and pre­pared for the evening con­fer­ence with his fol­low­ers. At this con­fer­ence it was de­cided to un­der­take a united mis­sion through­out all the cities and vil­lages of the De­capo­lis as soon as Je­sus and the twelve should re­turn from their pro­posed visit to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi. The Mas­ter par­tic­i­pated in plan­ning for the De­capo­lis mis­sion and, in dis­miss­ing the com­pany, said: “I say to you, be­ware of the leaven of the Phar­isees and the Sad­ducees. Be not de­ceived by their show of much learn­ing and by their pro­found loy­alty to the forms of re­li­gion. Be only con­cerned with the spirit of liv­ing truth and the power of true re­li­gion. It is not the fear of a dead re­li­gion that will save you but rather your faith in a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom. Do not al­low your­selves to be­come blinded by prej­u­dice and par­a­lyzed by fear. Nei­ther per­mit rev­er­ence for the tra­di­tions so to per­vert your un­der­stand­ing that your eyes see not and your ears hear not. It is not the pur­pose of true re­li­gion merely to bring peace but rather to in­sure prog­ress. And there can be no peace in the heart or prog­ress in the mind un­less you fall whole­heart­edly in love with truth, the ide­als of eter­nal re­al­i­ties. The is­sues of life and death are be­ing set be­fore you—the sin­ful plea­sures of time against the righ­teous re­al­i­ties of eter­nity. Even now you should be­gin to find de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of fear and doubt as you en­ter upon the liv­ing of the new life of faith and hope. And when the feel­ings of ser­vice for your fel­low men arise within your soul, do not sti­fle them; when the emo­tions of love for your neigh­bor well up within your heart, give ex­pres­sion to such urges of af­fec­tion in in­tel­li­gent min­istry to the real needs of your fel­lows.”

140:5.5He first talked about those who were poor in spirit, hun­gered af­ter righ­teous­ness, en­dured meek­ness, and who were pure in heart. Such spirit-dis­cern­ing mor­tals could be ex­pected to at­tain such lev­els of di­vine self­less­ness as to be able to at­tempt the amaz­ing ex­er­cise of fa­therly af­fec­tion; that even as mourn­ers they would be em­pow­ered to show mercy, pro­mote peace, and en­dure per­se­cu­tions, and through­out all of these try­ing sit­u­a­tions to love even unlovely man­kind with a fa­therly love. A fa­ther’s af­fec­tion can at­tain lev­els of de­vo­tion that im­mea­sur­ably tran­scend a brother’s af­fec­tion.

2:6.5Righ­teous­ness im­plies that God is the source of the moral law of the uni­verse. Truth ex­hibits God as a re­vealer, as a teacher. But love gives and craves af­fec­tion, seeks un­der­stand­ing fel­low­ship such as ex­ists be­tween par­ent and child. Righ­teous­ness may be the di­vine thought, but love is a fa­ther’s at­ti­tude. The er­ro­neous sup­po­si­tion that the righ­teous­ness of God was ir­rec­on­cil­able with the self­less love of the heav­enly Fa­ther, pre­sup­posed ab­sence of unity in the na­ture of De­ity and led di­rectly to the elab­o­ra­tion of the atone­ment doc­trine, which is a philo­sophic as­sault upon both the unity and the free-will­ness of God.

112:2.10There ex­ists a great cos­mic gulf be­tween mat­ter and thought, and this gulf is im­mea­sur­ably greater be­tween ma­te­rial mind and spir­i­tual love. Con­scious­ness, much less self-con­scious­ness, can­not be ex­plained by any the­ory of mech­a­nis­tic elec­tronic as­so­ci­a­tion or ma­te­ri­al­is­tic en­ergy phe­nom­ena.

• l. is only born of thorough understanding of neighbor’s motives, sentiments

2:4.2God is in­her­ently kind, nat­u­rally com­pas­sion­ate, and ev­er­last­ingly mer­ci­ful. And never is it nec­es­sary that any in­flu­ence be brought to bear upon the Fa­ther to call forth his lov­ing-kind­ness. The crea­ture’s need is wholly suf­fi­cient to in­sure the full flow of the Fa­ther’s ten­der mer­cies and his sav­ing grace. Since God knows all about his chil­dren, it is easy for him to for­give. The bet­ter man un­der­stands his neigh­bor, the eas­ier it will be to for­give him, even to love him.

• suspicion incompatible with l.

52:6.42. In­tel­lec­tual cross-fer­til­iza­tion. Broth­er­hood is im­pos­si­ble on a world whose in­hab­i­tants are so prim­i­tive that they fail to rec­og­nize the folly of un­mit­i­gated self­ish­ness. There must oc­cur an ex­change of na­tional and racial lit­er­a­ture. Each race must be­come fa­mil­iar with the thought of all races; each na­tion must know the feel­ings of all na­tions. Ig­no­rance breeds sus­pi­cion, and sus­pi­cion is in­com­pat­i­ble with the es­sen­tial at­ti­tude of sym­pa­thy and love.

• very much a direct response to being loved

56:8.3Bear in mind, all that God the Fa­ther and his Par­a­dise Sons do for us, we in turn and in spirit have the op­por­tu­nity to do for and in the emerg­ing Su­preme Be­ing. The ex­pe­ri­ence of love, joy, and ser­vice in the uni­verse is mu­tual. God the Fa­ther does not need that his sons should re­turn to him all that he be­stows upon them, but they do (or may) in turn be­stow all of this upon their fel­lows and upon the evolv­ing Su­preme Be­ing.

• l. cannot be created, manufactured, or purchased; it must grow

100:3.7Man can­not cause growth, but he can sup­ply fa­vor­able con­di­tions. Growth is al­ways un­con­scious, be it phys­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tual, or spir­i­tual. Love thus grows; it can­not be cre­ated, man­u­fac­tured, or pur­chased; it must grow. Evo­lu­tion is a cos­mic tech­nique of growth. So­cial growth can­not be se­cured by leg­is­la­tion, and moral growth is not had by im­proved ad­min­is­tra­tion. Man may man­u­fac­ture a ma­chine, but its real value must be de­rived from hu­man cul­ture and per­sonal ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Man’s sole con­tri­bu­tion to growth is the mo­bi­liza­tion of the to­tal pow­ers of his per­son­al­ity—liv­ing faith.

• l. is only born of thorough understanding of neighbor’s motives, sentiments

100:4.4In phys­i­cal life the senses tell of the ex­is­tence of things; mind dis­cov­ers the re­al­ity of mean­ings; but the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence re­veals to the in­di­vid­ual the true val­ues of life. These high lev­els of hu­man liv­ing are at­tained in the su­preme love of God and in the un­selfish love of man. If you love your fel­low men, you must have dis­cov­ered their val­ues. Je­sus loved men so much be­cause he placed such a high value upon them. You can best dis­cover val­ues in your as­so­ciates by dis­cov­er­ing their mo­ti­va­tion. If some­one ir­ri­tates you, causes feel­ings of re­sent­ment, you should sym­pa­thet­i­cally seek to dis­cern his view­point, his rea­sons for such ob­jec­tion­able con­duct. If once you un­der­stand your neigh­bor, you will be­come tol­er­ant, and this tol­er­ance will grow into friend­ship and ripen into love.

100:4.5In the mind’s eye con­jure up a pic­ture of one of your prim­i­tive an­ces­tors of cave-dwell­ing times—a short, mis­shapen, filthy, snarling hulk of a man stand­ing, legs spread, club up­raised, breath­ing hate and an­i­mos­ity as he looks fiercely just ahead. Such a pic­ture hardly de­picts the di­vine dig­nity of man. But al­low us to en­large the pic­ture. In front of this an­i­mated hu­man crouches a saber-toothed tiger. Be­hind him, a woman and two chil­dren. Im­me­di­ately you rec­og­nize that such a pic­ture stands for the be­gin­nings of much that is fine and no­ble in the hu­man race, but the man is the same in both pic­tures. Only, in the sec­ond sketch you are fa­vored with a widened hori­zon. You therein dis­cern the mo­ti­va­tion of this evolv­ing mor­tal. His at­ti­tude be­comes praise­wor­thy be­cause you un­der­stand him. If you could only fathom the mo­tives of your as­so­ciates, how much bet­ter you would un­der­stand them. If you could only know your fel­lows, you would even­tu­ally fall in love with them.

• the more we bestow ourselves upon our fellows, the more we l. them

129:0.2The Son of Man had now made ev­ery prepa­ra­tion for de­tach­ing him­self per­ma­nently from the Naz­a­reth home; and this was not easy for him to do. Je­sus nat­u­rally loved his peo­ple; he loved his fam­ily, and this nat­u­ral af­fec­tion had been tremen­dously aug­mented by his ex­traor­di­nary de­vo­tion to them. The more fully we be­stow our­selves upon our fel­lows, the more we come to love them; and since Je­sus had given him­self so fully to his fam­ily, he loved them with a great and fer­vent af­fec­tion.

• learn to l. others by loving Father; becoming interested in others’ welfare

155:3.4In­creas­ingly they learned from Je­sus to look upon hu­man per­son­al­i­ties in terms of their pos­si­bil­i­ties in time and in eter­nity. They learned that many souls can best be led to love the un­seen God by be­ing first taught to love their breth­ren whom they can see. And it was in this con­nec­tion that new mean­ing be­came at­tached to the Mas­ter’s pro­nounce­ment con­cern­ing un­selfish ser­vice for one’s fel­lows: “Inas­much as you did it to one of the least of my breth­ren, you did it to me.”

• freely give and receive l.

156:5.19Avoid dis­hon­esty and un­fair­ness in all your ef­forts to preach truth and pro­claim the gospel. Seek no un­earned rec­og­ni­tion and crave no un­de­served sym­pa­thy. Love, freely re­ceive from both di­vine and hu­man sources re­gard­less of your deserts, and love freely in re­turn. But in all other things re­lated to honor and adu­la­tion seek only that which hon­estly be­longs to you.

• faith enhances

159:3.12When my chil­dren once be­come self-con­scious of the as­sur­ance of the di­vine pres­ence, such a faith will ex­pand the mind, en­no­ble the soul, re­in­force the per­son­al­ity, aug­ment the hap­pi­ness, deepen the spirit per­cep­tion, and en­hance the power to love and be loved.

• l. is only born of thorough understanding of neighbor’s motives, sentiments

174:1.4“When a wise man un­der­stands the in­ner im­pulses of his fel­lows, he will love them. And when you love your brother, you have al­ready for­given him. This ca­pac­ity to un­der­stand man’s na­ture and for­give his ap­par­ent wrong­do­ing is God­like. If you are wise par­ents, this is the way you will love and un­der­stand your chil­dren, even for­give them when tran­sient mis­un­der­stand­ing has ap­par­ently sep­a­rated you. The child, be­ing im­ma­ture and lack­ing in the fuller un­der­stand­ing of the depth of the child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship, must fre­quently feel a sense of guilty sep­a­ra­tion from a fa­ther’s full ap­proval, but the true fa­ther is never con­scious of any such sep­a­ra­tion. Sin is an ex­pe­ri­ence of crea­ture con­scious­ness; it is not a part of God’s con­scious­ness.

• greatest l. is to lay down life for friends

180:1.3“When I in­vite you to love one an­other, even as I have loved you, I hold up be­fore you the su­preme mea­sure of true af­fec­tion, for greater love can no man have than this: that he will lay down his life for his friends. And you are my friends; you will con­tinue to be my friends if you are but will­ing to do what I have taught you. You have called me Mas­ter, but I do not call you ser­vants. If you will only love one an­other as I am lov­ing you, you shall be my friends, and I will ever speak to you of that which the Fa­ther re­veals to me.

• to share Master’s l., we must share his service

180:1.5If you would share the Mas­ter’s joy, you must share his love. And to share his love means that you have shared his ser­vice. Such an ex­pe­ri­ence of love does not de­liver you from the dif­fi­cul­ties of this world; it does not cre­ate a new world, but it most cer­tainly does make the old world new.

• learn to l. others by loving Father; becoming interested in others’ welfare

181:2.5As John Zeb­e­dee stood there in the up­per cham­ber, the tears rolling down his cheeks, he looked into the Mas­ter’s face and said: “And so I will, my Mas­ter, but how can I learn to love my breth­ren more?” And then an­swered Je­sus: “You will learn to love your breth­ren more when you first learn to love their Fa­ther in heaven more, and af­ter you have be­come truly more in­ter­ested in their wel­fare in time and in eter­nity. And all such hu­man in­ter­est is fos­tered by un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy, un­selfish ser­vice, and un­stinted for­give­ness. No man should de­spise your youth, but I ex­hort you al­ways to give due con­sid­er­a­tion to the fact that age of­ten­times rep­re­sents ex­pe­ri­ence, and that noth­ing in hu­man af­fairs can take the place of ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Strive to live peace­ably with all men, es­pe­cially your friends in the broth­er­hood of the heav­enly king­dom. And, John, al­ways re­mem­ber, strive not with the souls you would win for the king­dom.”

• greatest l. is to lay down life for friends

188:5.7The cross makes a su­preme ap­peal to the best in man be­cause it dis­closes one who was will­ing to lay down his life in the ser­vice of his fel­low men. Greater love no man can have than this: that he would be will­ing to lay down his life for his friends—and Je­sus had such a love that he was will­ing to lay down his life for his en­e­mies, a love greater than any which had hith­erto been known on earth.

• by the grace of faith

191:4.3“Peace be upon you. You all know that we have one Fa­ther in heaven, and that there is but one gospel of the king­dom—the good news of the gift of eter­nal life which men re­ceive by faith. As you re­joice in your loy­alty to the gospel, pray the Fa­ther of truth to shed abroad in your hearts a new and greater love for your breth­ren. You are to love all men as I have loved you; you are to serve all men as I have served you. With un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and broth­erly af­fec­tion, fel­low­ship all your breth­ren who are ded­i­cated to the procla­ma­tion of the good news, whether they be Jew or gen­tile, Greek or Ro­man, Per­sian or Ethiopian. John pro­claimed the king­dom in ad­vance; you have preached the gospel in power; the Greeks al­ready teach the good news; and I am soon to send forth the Spirit of Truth into the souls of all these, my breth­ren, who have so un­selfishly ded­i­cated their lives to the en­light­en­ment of their fel­lows who sit in spir­i­tual dark­ness. You are all the chil­dren of light; there­fore stum­ble not into the mis­un­der­stand­ing en­tan­gle­ments of mor­tal sus­pi­cion and hu­man in­tol­er­ance. If you are en­no­bled, by the grace of faith, to love un­be­liev­ers, should you not also equally love those who are your fel­low be­liev­ers in the far-spread­ing house­hold of faith? Re­mem­ber, as you love one an­other, all men will know that you are my dis­ci­ples.

191:6.2“Peace be upon you. That which my Fa­ther sent me into the world to es­tab­lish be­longs not to a race, a na­tion, nor to a spe­cial group of teach­ers or preach­ers. This gospel of the king­dom be­longs to both Jew and gen­tile, to rich and poor, to free and bond, to male and fe­male, even to the lit­tle chil­dren. And you are all to pro­claim this gospel of love and truth by the lives which you live in the flesh. You shall love one an­other with a new and startling af­fec­tion, even as I have loved you. You will serve man­kind with a new and amaz­ing de­vo­tion, even as I have served you. And when men see you so love them, and when they be­hold how fer­vently you serve them, they will per­ceive that you have be­come faith-fel­lows of the king­dom of heaven, and they will fol­low af­ter the Spirit of Truth which they see in your lives, to the find­ing of eter­nal sal­va­tion.

3:4.7Fi­nite ap­pre­ci­a­tion of in­fi­nite qual­i­ties far tran­scends the log­i­cally lim­ited ca­pac­i­ties of the crea­ture be­cause of the fact that mor­tal man is made in the im­age of God—there lives within him a frag­ment of in­fin­ity. There­fore man’s near­est and dear­est ap­proach to God is by and through love, for God is love. And all of such a unique re­la­tion­ship is an ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence in cos­mic so­ci­ol­ogy, the Cre­ator-crea­ture re­la­tion­ship—the Fa­ther-child af­fec­tion.

115:1.2Con­cep­tual frames of the uni­verse are only rel­a­tively true; they are ser­vice­able scaf­fold­ing which must even­tu­ally give way be­fore the ex­pan­sions of en­larg­ing cos­mic com­pre­hen­sion. The un­der­stand­ings of truth, beauty, and good­ness, moral­ity, ethics, duty, love, di­vin­ity, ori­gin, ex­is­tence, pur­pose, des­tiny, time, space, even De­ity, are only rel­a­tively true. God is much, much more than a Fa­ther, but the Fa­ther is man’s high­est con­cept of God; nonethe­less, the Fa­ther-Son por­trayal of Cre­ator-crea­ture re­la­tion­ship will be aug­mented by those super­mor­tal con­cep­tions of De­ity which will be at­tained in Or­von­ton, in Ha­vona, and on Par­a­dise. Man must think in a mor­tal uni­verse frame, but that does not mean that he can­not en­vi­sion other and higher frames within which thought can take place.

• selfish qualities of

100:2.4Spir­i­tu­al­ity be­comes at once the in­di­ca­tor of one’s near­ness to God and the mea­sure of one’s use­ful­ness to fel­low be­ings. Spir­i­tu­al­ity en­hances the abil­ity to dis­cover beauty in things, rec­og­nize truth in mean­ings, and dis­cover good­ness in val­ues. Spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment is de­ter­mined by ca­pac­ity there­for and is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the elim­i­na­tion of the self­ish qual­i­ties of love.

• l. for purpose of affectionate possession

127:6.1The story of Re­becca’s love for Je­sus was whis­pered about Naz­a­reth and later on at Ca­per­naum, so that, while in the years to fol­low many women loved Je­sus even as men loved him, not again did he have to re­ject the per­sonal prof­fer of an­other good woman’s de­vo­tion. From this time on hu­man af­fec­tion for Je­sus par­took more of the na­ture of wor­ship­ful and ador­ing re­gard. Both men and women loved him de­vot­edly and for what he was, not with any tinge of self-sat­is­fac­tion or de­sire for af­fec­tion­ate pos­ses­sion. But for many years, when­ever the story of Je­sus’ hu­man per­son­al­ity was re­cited, the de­vo­tion of Re­becca was re­counted.

• do not allow l. to become stumbling block

158:7.4Pe­ter spoke thus be­cause he loved Je­sus; but the Mas­ter’s hu­man na­ture rec­og­nized in these words of well-meant af­fec­tion the sub­tle sug­ges­tion of temp­ta­tion that he change his pol­icy of pur­su­ing to the end his earth be­stowal in ac­cor­dance with the will of his Par­a­dise Fa­ther. And it was be­cause he de­tected the dan­ger of per­mit­ting the sug­ges­tions of even his af­fec­tion­ate and loyal friends to dis­suade him, that he turned upon Pe­ter and the other apos­tles, say­ing: “Get you be­hind me. You sa­vor of the spirit of the ad­ver­sary, the tempter. When you talk in this man­ner, you are not on my side but rather on the side of our en­emy. In this way do you make your love for me a stum­bling block to my do­ing the Fa­ther’s will. Mind not the ways of men but rather the will of God.”

• often dangerous, semiselfish trait in mortal parents

177:2.3“Love, John, is the su­preme re­al­ity of the uni­verse when be­stowed by all-wise be­ings, but it is a dan­ger­ous and of­ten­times semi­selfish trait as it is man­i­fested in the ex­pe­ri­ence of mor­tal par­ents. When you get mar­ried and have chil­dren of your own to rear, make sure that your love is ad­mon­ished by wis­dom and guided by in­tel­li­gence.

• not psychic illusion because purely subjective

196:3.21The ex­qui­site and tran­scen­dent ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing and be­ing loved is not just a psy­chic il­lu­sion be­cause it is so purely sub­jec­tive. The one truly di­vine and ob­jec­tive re­al­ity that is as­so­ci­ated with mor­tal be­ings, the Thought Ad­juster, func­tions to hu­man ob­ser­va­tion ap­par­ently as an ex­clu­sively sub­jec­tive phe­nom­e­non. Man’s con­tact with the high­est ob­jec­tive re­al­ity, God, is only through the purely sub­jec­tive ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing him, of wor­ship­ing him, of re­al­iz­ing son­ship with him.

127:2.8Some­thing had to be done. He must state his po­si­tion, and this he did bravely and diplo­mat­i­cally to the sat­is­fac­tion of many, but not all. He ad­hered to the terms of his orig­i­nal plea, main­tain­ing that his first duty was to his fam­ily, that a wid­owed mother and eight broth­ers and sis­ters needed some­thing more than mere money could buy—the phys­i­cal ne­ces­si­ties of life—that they were en­ti­tled to a fa­ther’s watch­care and guid­ance, and that he could not in clear con­science re­lease him­self from the obli­ga­tion which a cruel ac­ci­dent had thrust upon him. He paid com­pli­ment to his mother and el­dest brother for be­ing will­ing to re­lease him but re­it­er­ated that loy­alty to a dead fa­ther for­bade his leav­ing the fam­ily no mat­ter how much money was forth­com­ing for their ma­te­rial sup­port, mak­ing his never-to-be-for­got­ten state­ment that “money can­not love.” In the course of this ad­dress Je­sus made sev­eral veiled ref­er­ences to his “life mis­sion” but ex­plained that, re­gard­less of whether or not it might be in­con­sis­tent with the mil­i­tary idea, it, along with ev­ery­thing else in his life, had been given up in or­der that he might be able to dis­charge faith­fully his obli­ga­tion to his fam­ily. Ev­ery­one in Naz­a­reth well knew he was a good fa­ther to his fam­ily, and this was a mat­ter so near the heart of ev­ery no­ble Jew that Je­sus’ plea found an ap­pre­cia­tive re­sponse in the hearts of many of his hear­ers; and some of those who were not thus minded were dis­armed by a speech made by James, which, while not on the pro­gram, was de­liv­ered at this time. That very day the chazan had re­hearsed James in his speech, but that was their se­cret.

84:1.6A fam­ily of some sim­ple sort was in­sured by the fact that the re­pro­duc­tive func­tion en­tails the mother-child re­la­tion­ship. Mother love is in­stinc­tive; it did not orig­i­nate in the mores as did mar­riage. All mam­malian mother love is the in­her­ent en­dow­ment of the ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its of the lo­cal uni­verse and is in strength and de­vo­tion al­ways di­rectly pro­por­tional to the length of the help­less in­fancy of the species.

84:1.7The mother and child re­la­tion is nat­u­ral, strong, and in­stinc­tive, and one which, there­fore, con­strained prim­i­tive women to sub­mit to many strange con­di­tions and to en­dure un­told hard­ships. This com­pelling mother love is the hand­i­cap­ping emo­tion which has al­ways placed woman at such a tremen­dous dis­ad­van­tage in all her strug­gles with man. Even at that, ma­ter­nal in­stinct in the hu­man species is not over­pow­er­ing; it may be thwarted by am­bi­tion, self­ish­ness, and re­li­gious con­vic­tion.

100:4.3But the great prob­lem of re­li­gious liv­ing con­sists in the task of uni­fy­ing the soul pow­ers of the per­son­al­ity by the dom­i­nance of LOVE. Health, men­tal ef­fi­ciency, and hap­pi­ness arise from the uni­fi­ca­tion of phys­i­cal sys­tems, mind sys­tems, and spirit sys­tems. Of health and san­ity man un­der­stands much, but of hap­pi­ness he has truly re­al­ized very lit­tle. The high­est hap­pi­ness is in­dis­sol­ubly linked with spir­i­tual prog­ress. Spir­i­tual growth yields last­ing joy, peace which passes all un­der­stand­ing.

112:2.7The uni­verse fact of God’s be­com­ing man has for­ever changed all mean­ings and al­tered all val­ues of hu­man per­son­al­ity. In the true mean­ing of the word, love con­notes mu­tual re­gard of whole per­son­al­i­ties, whether hu­man or di­vine or hu­man and di­vine. Parts of the self may func­tion in nu­mer­ous ways—think­ing, feel­ing, wish­ing—but only the co-or­di­nated at­tri­butes of the whole per­son­al­ity are fo­cused in in­tel­li­gent ac­tion; and all of these pow­ers are as­so­ci­ated with the spir­i­tual en­dow­ment of the mor­tal mind when a hu­man be­ing sin­cerely and un­selfishly loves an­other be­ing, hu­man or di­vine.

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

16:9.7Un­selfish­ness, aside from pa­ren­tal in­stinct, is not al­to­gether nat­u­ral; other per­sons are not nat­u­rally loved or so­cially served. It re­quires the en­light­en­ment of rea­son, moral­ity, and the urge of re­li­gion, God-know­ing­ness, to gen­er­ate an un­selfish and al­tru­is­tic so­cial or­der. Man’s own per­son­al­ity aware­ness, self-con­scious­ness, is also di­rectly de­pen­dent on this very fact of in­nate other-aware­ness, this in­nate abil­ity to rec­og­nize and grasp the re­al­ity of other per­son­al­ity, rang­ing from the hu­man to the di­vine.

16:9.8Un­selfish so­cial con­scious­ness must be, at bot­tom, a re­li­gious con­scious­ness; that is, if it is ob­jec­tive; oth­er­wise it is a purely sub­jec­tive philo­sophic ab­strac­tion and there­fore de­void of love. Only a God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual can love an­other per­son as he loves him­self.

1:7.3The con­cept of truth might pos­si­bly be en­ter­tained apart from per­son­al­ity, the con­cept of beauty may ex­ist with­out per­son­al­ity, but the con­cept of di­vine good­ness is un­der­stand­able only in re­la­tion to per­son­al­ity. Only a per­son can love and be loved. Even beauty and truth would be di­vorced from sur­vival hope if they were not at­tri­butes of a per­sonal God, a lov­ing Fa­ther.

174:1.2Af­ter a short si­lence Je­sus looked sig­nif­i­cantly at all four and an­swered: “My breth­ren, you err in your opin­ions be­cause you do not com­pre­hend the na­ture of those in­ti­mate and lov­ing re­la­tions be­tween the crea­ture and the Cre­ator, be­tween man and God. You fail to grasp that un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy which the wise par­ent en­ter­tains for his im­ma­ture and some­times erring child. It is in­deed doubt­ful whether in­tel­li­gent and af­fec­tion­ate par­ents are ever called upon to for­give an av­er­age and nor­mal child. Un­der­stand­ing re­la­tion­ships as­so­ci­ated with at­ti­tudes of love ef­fec­tively pre­vent all those es­trange­ments which later ne­ces­si­tate the read­just­ment of re­pen­tance by the child with for­give­ness by the par­ent.

102:1.1The work of the Thought Ad­juster con­sti­tutes the ex­pla­na­tion of the trans­la­tion of man’s prim­i­tive and evo­lu­tion­ary sense of duty into that higher and more cer­tain faith in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of rev­e­la­tion. There must be per­fec­tion hunger in man’s heart to in­sure ca­pac­ity for com­pre­hend­ing the faith paths to su­preme at­tain­ment. If any man chooses to do the di­vine will, he shall know the way of truth. It is lit­er­ally true, “Hu­man things must be known in or­der to be loved, but di­vine things must be loved in or­der to be known.” But hon­est doubts and sin­cere ques­tion­ings are not sin; such at­ti­tudes merely spell de­lay in the pro­gres­sive jour­ney to­ward per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. Child­like trust se­cures man’s en­trance into the king­dom of heav­enly as­cent, but prog­ress is wholly de­pen­dent on the vig­or­ous ex­er­cise of the ro­bust and con­fi­dent faith of the full-grown man.

12:9.2Love is the se­cret of ben­e­fi­cial as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween per­son­al­i­ties. You can­not re­ally know a per­son as the re­sult of a sin­gle con­tact. You can­not ap­pre­ci­at­ingly know mu­sic through math­e­mat­i­cal de­duc­tion, even though mu­sic is a form of math­e­mat­i­cal rhythm. The num­ber as­signed to a tele­phone sub­scriber does not in any man­ner iden­tify the per­son­al­ity of that sub­scriber or sig­nify any­thing con­cern­ing his char­ac­ter.

140:5.6The faith and the love of these beat­i­tudes strengthen moral char­ac­ter and cre­ate hap­pi­ness. Fear and anger weaken char­ac­ter and de­stroy hap­pi­ness. This mo­men­tous ser­mon started out upon the note of hap­pi­ness.

100:0.2Spir­i­tual growth is mu­tu­ally stim­u­lated by in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion with other re­li­gion­ists. Love sup­plies the soil for re­li­gious growth—an ob­jec­tive lure in the place of sub­jec­tive grat­i­fi­ca­tion—yet it yields the su­preme sub­jec­tive sat­is­fac­tion. And re­li­gion en­no­bles the com­mon­place drudgery of daily liv­ing.

103:8.3A good and no­ble man may be con­sum­mately in love with his wife but ut­terly un­able to pass a sat­is­fac­tory writ­ten ex­am­i­na­tion on the psy­chol­ogy of mar­i­tal love. An­other man, hav­ing lit­tle or no love for his spouse, might pass such an ex­am­i­na­tion most ac­cept­ably. The im­per­fec­tion of the lover’s in­sight into the true na­ture of the beloved does not in the least in­val­i­date ei­ther the re­al­ity or sin­cer­ity of his love.