The Sound of Love

There is a passage in Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy by Irving Tomlinson that has particular resonance for me. It is on pages 108-109.

 

Sarah Pike Conger, (who “was the wife of an American diplomat and served with him in China at the time of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900”) had had an interview with Mrs Eddy in 1897. Her description of how she heard the words of Mrs Eddy that day shows us what might be called “the sound of Love”. Here’s what she wrote (the underlining is mine):

 

“After a few words about the weather and me going to Brazil, she started out in Christian Science, every word sounding in the pure atmosphere of Love. Such a day I never saw before nor since - Love was the key note and all other notes were in harmony with it. Those words of advice and encouragement were from the mother-heart and all was love. To make unforgettable—permanent—her points, she would tell some of her demonstrations. Her words and their intonations—her earnestness—her tenderness—her positiveness—her great understanding awakened and quickened my heart-beats with new life and its activity.

 

“… when I heard her voice utter the words there was a life in them beyond the written word—and they have vibrated in sweet-echoing tones through these years, helping me to remember and to detect the Christ-hand ever pointing the way heavenward.”

 

What is this language of Love which quickens the heartstrings? What does Love sound like? How can we hear it and speak it to others? Sarah Conger writes that Mrs Eddy said, “I have striven earnestly to have my students speak in a language which would be understood.”

 

I am reminded of Mrs Eddy’s poem Christ, my refuge: (See hymns 253-257 and 550-552.)

 

O’er waiting harpstrings of the mind
There sweeps a strain,
Low, sad, and sweet, whose measures bind
The power of pain,

And wake a white-winged angel throng
Of thoughts, illumed
By faith, and breathed in raptured song,
With love perfumed.
(Hymn. 253:1, 2)

 

It is Love stirring one to know and feel its presence, its harmony, its light. That is the sound of Love!

 

Marie Fox