HAVE YOU TRIED LOVE'S WAY?
Love, like the sun, never sees the dark side of anything.
You can purchase a man's labor, you've got to cultivate his good
will.
Sweeter than the perfume of roses is the possession of a kind,
charitable, unselfish nature, a ready disposition to do for others
any good turn in one's power.
A New York man who saw a little girl carrying a crippled boy across a
street, offered to assist her, telling her that the boy was too heavy
for her to carry. "Oh, no," said the child quickly, "he's not heavy;
_he's my brother_."
Oh, marvelous power of love that lightens all heavy burdens and smooths
all rough roads! What would become of humanity were it not for love,
which sweetens the hardest labor and makes self-sacrifice a joy? It is
the greatest force in the universe. Without its transforming power we
should still be primitive barbarians.
In spite of the loud cries of pessimists and skeptics to the contrary,
its light is still leading men upward. Although the dream of the world's
peacemakers has come to naught and Europe is plunged in a merciless war,
yet there are multitudes of signs of the reign of love. Its merciful
healing power is at work even on the cruel battlefield. We see it
animating the great army of Red Cross surgeons and nurses, who,
regardless of creed or country, racial or social differences, are
treating all the wounded soldiers as brothers, binding up their wounds
and nursing them back to health and life. Love is healing the hurts made
by hate and discord.
We see its influence in the miracle which the leaven of the Golden Rule
is performing in the business world, in the passion for social service
in the world at large, in the gradual obliteration of class
distinctions, in the growing efforts to ameliorate the conditions of the
poor, in the great wave of reform that is beating against the walls of
all our institutions, our jails, our poorhouses, our reformatories, our
insane asylums. The abuses with which these places were filled are
gradually being cleared up by love.
In many of our prisons, the kindly, brotherhood system of treatment that
has been inaugurated is really helping to reform criminals, whereas the
old system of penology killed men, broke their spirit, or made them more
hardened in crime. It rarely, if ever, reformed. Love's way must in time
banish altogether the old cruel prison methods, and ultimately the
criminal himself. When the world is run by love, by the Golden Rule
plan, crime will die a natural death.
Every one who slips from the right path, no matter what he has done,
should be given another chance, a fresh opportunity to make good, to
rebuild his character. One who has sinned against society should not be
expelled from the sympathies, the good-will and the kindliness of his
fellowmen. Criminals should be treated as unfortunate brothers and
sisters who have stumbled and lost their way on the life path. Love is
the only medium that will help them to rise, to get back into the
current that runs Godward.
People who understand them, who see a God in the ruins that evil
influences have made, would make good men and women out of the great
majority of our prisoners.
Many of these poor wretches never had an opportunity. They never felt
the magic touch of love, never knew the influence of a good home, of
honest, loving parents. Most of them did not have a right start in life.
They were handicapped at birth by ignorance, by disease, by vicious
parentage. They never had a fair chance. Love's way would give them one.
Shutting them into cramped, miserable, sunless cells, with none of the
comforts or conveniences of life, where none of the humanities reach
them; meting them out treatment we would not dream of inflicting on our
domestic animals, is like trying to put out fire with kerosene oil. Such
treatment makes them worse, arouses their basest passions of revenge,
bitterness and hatred, fills them with a determination to "get even"
with society.
Society is beginning to wake up to the futility of such brutal methods.
It is beginning to apply love's way to its criminal classes, to all
classes.
Our free hospitals, our homes for the aged and poor, our public asylums,
are all, like our prisons, working upward toward the light. The fallen,
the sick, the poor, the old, the maimed, the bruised and suffering,
everywhere are receiving more consideration, more humane treatment, more
kindness. And we are finding that greater trust in them, greater
sympathy and greater interest in our unfortunate brothers and sisters,
are working a marvelous change in human conditions.
In other words, in spite of many seeming contradictions, many glaring
evils in our midst, many setbacks and discouragements, the spirit of the
Christ, of the Golden Rule, is acting like a healing leaven and
performing miracles in the great human mass.
Love is the great mind opener, the great heart opener and life-enricher,
the great developer. It is what holds society together, and if children
were trained to love humanity, to love all countries and their
inhabitants as they are taught to love their own country and countrymen,
there would be no wars. War proceeds largely from what is called
patriotism. And patriotism in its narrower sense, which seeks only its
own good, its own aggrandizement, at the expense of other countries and
peoples, has ever been the curse of the race. When our love is big
enough to say, "The world is my country," wars will cease.
A few days ago I was attracted by an advertisement in a morning paper
which said, "When every other physician has given you up; when you have
failed to find relief from all other sources, then come to me. You are
the sort of person I cure." The advertiser may have been a quack, but
the advertisement would make its appeal, perhaps, to the desperate, the
discouraged, who had been given up as incurable by the regular
profession, and it set me to thinking. "Why, this," I said to myself,
"is the language of Divine Love's advertisement. 'Come unto me all ye
that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.' When you have
failed to find comfort, satisfaction or joy in anything else, when your
friends have deserted you, when your business is ruined, when you have
made fatal mistakes and society has closed its doors on you, when
everybody else rejects and denounces you, when everything else has
failed, then come to me and you shall find peace and rest."
Love is the sovereign remedy. It is the last resort of those driven to
desperation. When nothing else is left, when life is full of bitterness
and anguish, the thief, the murderer, the failure, the outcast turns to
Love and finds a refuge, for "Love never faileth."
Love is to every human being what mother love is to the erring child. No
son or daughter has ever fallen so low as to get beyond a mother's love.
When society has turned its back on the outcast, when the prison door
closes behind him, when companions have fled, when sympathy and mercy
have departed, when the world has forgotten, the mother remembers and
loves her child. She visits her boy in the "death house," her daughter
in the dens of vice in the slums. The child can never stray too far for
the mother's love to follow. It is the most perfect prototype of our
Father-Mother-God's love.
The Vedanta scriptures, which are thousands of years older than the Old
Testament of our Bible, commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves
because we are all neighbors, because of the oneness of all life,
because the same spirit is in all human beings. Until we see and live
in conscious coöperation with this oneness of spirit, until the world
sees it in all human beings, there will be public strife, private
quarrels, greed, selfish ambition, inhumanity of man to man, poverty,
crime, all sorts of wretchedness and misery. Love alone can wipe all
these out. Human laws, repression, punishment will never do it. Christ's
way, Love's way, holds the solution of all life's problems.
I was talking recently with a cold-blooded, overbearing, brow-beating
business man who told me he was going out of business because he was so
tired and sick of incompetent, dishonest help. His employees, he said,
were always taking advantage of him, stealing, spoiling merchandise,
blundering, shirking, clipping their hours. They took no interest in his
welfare, their only concern being in what they found in their pay
envelope. "I have enough to live on," he concluded, "and I don't propose
to run a business for their benefit. I have tried every means I know of
to get good work out of ignorant, selfish help, but it is no use, and
now I have done with it. My nervous system is worn out and I must give
up the game."
"You say you have tried everything you could think of in managing your
employees, but has it ever occurred to you to try Love's way?" I asked.
"Love's way!" he said disgustedly. "What do you mean by that? Why, if I
didn't use a club all the time my help would ride right over me and ruin
me. For years I have had to employ detectives and spies to protect my
interests. What do these people know about love? Why I would have the
red flag out here in no time if I should attempt any such fool business
as that."
A young man who had been successful in Golden Rule management hearing of
the situation saw in it a possible opening, and asked this man to give
him a trial as manager before giving up his business altogether.
The result was, he was so pleased with him that in less than half an
hour he had engaged him as manager, although he still insisted that it
was a very doubtful experiment.
The first thing the new man did on taking charge was to call the
employees in each department together and have a heart to heart talk
with them. He told them that he had come there not only as a friend of
the proprietor, but as their friend also, and that he would do
everything in his power to advance their interests as well as those of
the business. The house, he told them, had been losing money for years,
and it was up to him and them to change all that and put the balance on
the right side of the ledger. He made them see that harmony and
coöperation are the basis of any real success for a concern and its
employees.
From the start he was cheerful, hopeful, sympathetic, enthusiastic,
encouraging. He quickly won the confidence and good will of everybody in
the establishment, and had them all working as heartily for the success
of the business as if it were their own. The place was like a great
beehive, where all were industrious, happy, contented, working for the
hive. So great was the change that customers began to talk about the new
spirit in the house. Business grew and prospered, and in an incredibly
short time, the concern was making instead of losing money.
Yet in many respects the new manager was not nearly as able as his
employer, but he had a different spirit. He was animated by a belief in
the brotherhood of man. He had sympathy, tact, diplomacy, and a real
personal interest in those who worked under him. He never scolded them
when they did not do right; he simply talked with them like an elder
brother and made them ashamed of themselves. He showed them there was a
better way, and they followed it. In short, he won their love and
respect and they would do anything for him.
The Golden Rule method had driven out hate, selfishness, greed and
dissension. The interests of all were centered on the general welfare,
and so all prospered. When the proprietor returned from abroad, whither
he had gone for a few months' rest and recuperation, he could scarcely
believe in the reality of the transformation that "love's way" had
effected in his old employees and in the entire establishment.
You who have been tortured and torn to pieces for years with hot
tempers, with worry, with fear, with hatred and ill will; you who have
already committed suicide on many years of your life, why not turn your
back on all this and try love's way? So far your life has been a
disappointment. There must be a better way for all who bear the scars
and stains of strife, who have been battered and buffeted by the old
evil way, in which there has been no rest, no harmony, no sweetness. Why
not try love's way? Try it for every trouble, for every hurt and sorrow.
Try it you whose home life has been a bitter disappointment; you
husbands and wives who have quarreled, who have never known what peace
and comfort are, try love's way. It will smooth out all your wrinkles,
it will put a new spirit into your home that was never there before, it
will bring a new light into your eyes, new hope into your heart, and new
joy into your life.
You mothers who have worn yourselves to a frazzle and prematurely aged
yourselves in trying to bring up your children by scolding, nagging,
punishing, driving, why not try love's way instead? You can love your
boys and girls into obedience and respect much more quickly and with far
better results to them and to yourself than by driving them; appeal to
their best and noblest instincts instead of their worst, and you will
be surprised how quickly and readily they will respond to your appeal.
There is something in human nature which protests against being driven
or forced. If you have been trying to force your boys and girls in the
past, give it up and try the new way, love's way. See if it does not
work wonders in your home. See if it will not make your domestic
machinery run much more smoothly. See if it will not wonderfully relieve
the strain upon yourself. Give love's way a trial.
Try it, you fault-finding, scolding housewife. Instead of nagging your
family, fretting and stewing from morning till night, blaming,
upbraiding, complaining, try love's way. Instead of berating a maid
before your guests when she accidentally breaks a piece of china, put
yourself in her place, try to realize her embarrassment, and pass over
the mishap cheerfully. Then, in private, give her a gentle word of
caution. She will be more careful in the future. If your laundress
returns a piece of smirched linen, or if her work is not quite so well
done as it was the last time, don't give her a brutal scolding. Harsh
treatment will only make her sullen and unhappy, but you will find her
susceptible to kindness and gentle words.
Give sympathy and kindness instead of scolding and nagging and you will
work a revolution in your household. You will be delighted to find how
quickly love's way will change the atmosphere in your family, how soon
helpful relations will take the place of antagonistic ones. Praise,
generous, whole-hearted, unstinted praise, now and then, will not hurt
any one, but, on the contrary, will act like lubricating oil on dry
squeaky machinery, and its reflex action on yourself will be magical.
You husbands who have been substituting money and luxury for love, who
have thought that if a woman had a fine house, beautiful clothes and all
her bills paid, she ought to be satisfied and happy; you who have so
miserably failed of your object in this substitution will be surprised
to find how much happier you can make your wife by bestowing on her a
generous, unselfish love. A very little money, a very humble home with
love will make every true woman happier than millions, a palatial home,
with indifference.
Try love's way, you men who have been lording it over your families,
bullying and brow-beating your wives and children, using slave-driving
methods in your home. You know that this old brutal way has not brought
you happiness or satisfaction; you have always been disappointed with
it, then why not try the new philosophy, try love's way? It is the great
cure-all, it is the Christ remedy which is leavening the world.
Try it you who are worn out with the discord and the hagglings, the
trials and tribulations you encounter every day in your business. You
men and women who have never been able to get good help, who are driven
to desperation with the wicked breakage and wastage of your employees;
you who have been through purgatory in your struggle with dishonesty and
inefficiency, whose faces are furrowed with cruel wrinkles and
prematurely aged in trying to fight evil with evil, try love's way. It
will create a new spirit in your store, your factory, your office.
Whatever your business, whatever your trials and difficulties, love will
ease the jolts of life and smooth your way miraculously. Try love's way
all you who have hitherto lived in purgatory because you did not know
this better way.
You have tried the "getting square" policy, the hatred and grudge
method; you have tried the revenge way, the jealousy way; you have tried
the worry, the anxiety method, and these have pained and tortured you
all the more. You have tried law and the courts to settle troubles and
difficulties with neighbors and business associates, and perhaps you won
lawsuits only to make bitter, life-long enemies. But perhaps you have
never yet tried love's way, excepting in spots. If you have not yet
tried it as a principle, as a life philosophy, as a great life
lubricant, begin now. It will smooth out all the rough places and
wonderfully ease your journey over the jolts of life.
You may be wondering why you have so few friends, why you do not attract
people, why others are not more interested in you. Look into your heart
and you will find the reason. If you are sending out a current of
selfishness, of uncharitableness, unkindness, indifference, ingratitude,
you can not get a return current of friendship, of encouragement and
helpfulness. The stream that leads back to you will be just like that
which goes out in your thought, in your habitual mental attitude. To
have friends, to win love you must make yourself a magnet for love. You
must send out the friendly thought current, the helpful current, the
kindly, loving current of human fellowship. If you give out stinginess,
narrowness, meanness, selfishness, you will not receive love's gifts in
return. As you give, so will you receive, and the more generously you
give of love and kindness and service the more generously will the
current that returns bear them back to you.
The most beautiful thing on this earth, that which every human being
craves most is love. It is, as Henry Ward Beecher said, "the river of
life in this world. Think not that ye know it who stand at the little
tinkling rill, the first small fountain. Not until you have gone through
the rocky gorges, and not lost the stream; not until you have gone
through the meadow, and the stream has widened and deepened until fleets
could ride on its bosom; not until beyond the meadow you have come to
the unfathomable ocean, and poured your treasures into its depths--not
until then can you know what love is."
All through the Bible are passages which extol the height and depth, the
breadth and power, the inexhaustibleness of love. The more of love we
give out, the more we have. Love maintains perpetual summer in the soul
and shuts out winter's chill. Love of man is love of God, and love of
God prolongs life.
"With long life will I satisfy him," declares Jehovah in the words of
the Psalmist, "because he hath set his love upon me." Love is harmony,
and harmony prolongs life, as fear, jealousy, envy, friction, and
discord shorten it. Those who are filled with the spirit of love, whose
sympathies are not confined to their own family, but reach out to every
member of the human family, are more exempt from the ills of mankind
than the selfish and pessimistic, who lose the better part of life, the
joy and the strength that come from giving themselves to others.
Some natures are so permeated with the spirit of love, of helpfulness,
of unselfishness, that their very presence acts like a balm upon the
wounded soul. They radiate harmony, soul sunshine. There is a personal
charm about them which strengthens, reassures, and uplifts.
No more scientific advice was ever uttered on this earth than "Love your
enemies." Nothing will take the sting out of unkindness like kindness;
nothing will disarm prejudice, hatred, and jealousy like love. It is
impossible for any one to continue to hate us, when we send out to him
only love thoughts, love vibrations, or to be jealous of us when we send
out to him only kindly, generous, helpful thoughts. Hatred or the spirit
of revenge cannot live in the presence of love any more than an acid can
retain its eating, biting qualities in the presence of an alkali.
One whose heart is filled with love for all cannot possibly have an
enemy very long, because love dissolves all enmity, all jealousy,
neutralizes, antidotes all hatred. One-sided hatred cannot exist because
there is nothing to keep it alive. It must be fed in some way or the
fire will die out for lack of fuel.
It is simply impossible to keep on feeling unkindly towards another, to
continue hating him very long when we discover that he feels kindly
toward us and is willing to help us. I have never felt so humiliated in
my life as when years ago, in my hot youth, I was rendered a very great
service by a man whom I disliked intensely, and against whom I had for
some time cherished a grudge. His great-hearted, generous act, which was
a real help to me, made me feel utterly ashamed of myself. It showed me
as nothing else could have done what a mean, unworthy, contemptible
thing it is to nurse a feeling of hate or revenge toward a fellow-being.
We cannot hold the love thought without feeling the uplift, the glow,
the divine energy which it sends through the whole system. Nor, on the
other hand, can we hold the hate thought, the revenge, the jealous, the
envious, or any other mean, selfish thought, without a feeling of
depression, a feeling of smallness, of contemptibleness, which robs us
of self-respect and of power.
When you denounce and condemn others, when you nurse bitterness and ill
will in your heart, you start boomerang vibrations which impair your
cell life and seriously mar your happiness and efficiency. One of the
great benefits of devotional exercise, of prayer, of contemplation, of
divine thinking, is that this mental attitude sets in motion vibrations
which have a helpful, uplifting influence on both mind and body. Where
love and affection are habitually vibrating through the cell life they
develop a poise and serenity of character, a sweetness and strength, a
peace and satisfaction that reënforce the whole being. Love soothes and
strengthens. Hate lacerates, wrinkles, weakens. The character of people
who keep themselves continually stirred up by discordant emotions, who
live in discordant homes where there is perpetual wrangling, criticism,
denunciation, scolding, twitting are cold, skeptical, unlovely, selfish.
Their affections become marbleized. There is nothing outside of vice
which will deform the character so quickly as living in an atmosphere of
perpetual hatred, jealousy, envy and revenge. The wear and tear of their
vicious vibrations is ever getting in its deadly work.
Love is the great disciplinarian, the supreme harmonizer, the true
peacemaker. It is the great balm for all that blights happiness or
breeds discontent, a sovereign panacea for malice, revenge, and all
brutish passions and propensities. As cruelty melts before kindness, so
the evil passions find their antidote in sweet charity and loving
sympathy.
One reason why a happy home is the sweetest, most beautiful spot on
earth is because the love atmosphere, the harmony vibrations give a
blessed sensation of harmony, of rest, of safety, security and power.
The moment we enter such a place we feel its soothing, reassuring,
uplifting atmosphere. It produces a feeling of mental poise, of serenity
which we do not experience anywhere else.
During a recent visit to a large family I was much impressed by the
power of one person to create this beautiful home spirit. In this family
was one sister who, though the youngest member, seemed to take the place
of the mother, who was dead. This young girl was the apparent center of
the home. Nothing of importance was undertaken by any of her brothers
without consulting her. Not one of them would leave the house without
first kissing her good-by, and she was the first one they sought when
they came home. They all seemed anxious to confide to her their little
secrets, to tell her of what had happened to them during the day, to
have her opinion and advice in all difficulties.
The secret of this young girl's influence lay in her great interest in
the boys, and her wonderful love for them. In talking with the brothers
I discovered that each thought that the sister was especially interested
in him and his affairs, and that he would not think of undertaking or
deciding anything of importance without first consulting her. Each and
all of them seemed to prefer her company to that of any other young
lady, and were always proud to escort her when she went anywhere. Those
boys are all clean-minded, open, frank and chivalrous, and I could not
help thinking that a great deal of it was due to the sister's influence.
"To love, and to be loved," said Sydney Smith, "is the greatest
happiness of existence." Every one, rich and poor, high and low, is
reaching out for love. What will not a man do to win the love of one who
embodies his ideal of womanhood; one in whom he sees all the beautiful
qualities that he himself lacks! This love is really a divine hunger,
the longing for possession of what would make him a whole man instead of
the half one he feels he is.
Why is it that when a coarse-grained, brutal, dissipated man falls in
love with a sweet, pure girl he immediately changes his ways, looks up,
thinks up, braces up, drops his profanity, is more refined, more choice
in his language, more exclusive in his associations, and is, to all
appearances, for the time at least, a changed man? Simply because love
is a more powerful motive to the man than dissipation. He drops the
latter, and if his love is steady and true he will never again indulge
in any degrading practice.
Who has not seen the magic power of love in transforming rough, uncouth
men into refined and devoted husbands? I have known women who had such
great, loving, helpful hearts, and such charm of manner, that the worst
men, the most hardened characters would do anything in the world for
them--would give up their lives even to protect them. But these men
could not be reformed by prison methods, could not be touched by
unkindness or compulsion. Love is the only power that could reach them.
I do not believe there is any human being, in prison or out, so
depraved, so low, so bad but that there is somebody in the world who
could control him perfectly by love, by kindness, by patience. Many a
man has been kept from performing a disgraceful, a criminal act by the
thought that somebody loved him, believed in him, trusted him.
"Though thy sins be as scarlet they shall be made whiter than snow."
Love purifies, lifts up, regenerates. We are all familiar with its
wonderful transforming power; how it erases the scars of sin, smooths
out the wrinkles which vice has left in the face, softens the hard
features and puts its own divine stamp there. We know how it changes the
coarse, brutal, sinful man into its own divine likeness, how it brings
the color back to the pale cheek, the luster to the dull eye, how it
restores courage to the disheartened, hope to the distressed and the
despairing. We know how it calls into the face a light which was never
there before, and which is not of earth.
In the remarkable play, "The Passing of the Third Floor Back," we have a
striking illustration of the subtle, silent force of the love motive.
Those who have seen or read the play will remember how in response to an
advertisement in a London paper, "Room to let, Third floor back," comes
a remarkable man, who is given the title of "The Stranger." This man
takes the "third floor back," and finds himself in a boarding house
filled with questionable characters, petty thieves, gamblers, people who
have led fast lives, all sorts of uncharitable, envious men and women.
They stoop to every kind of meanness. One woman even steals candles.
Every one tries to cheat every one else and is cheated in return. The
landlady is of the same type as her boarders. She preys on them and they
prey on her. She waters the milk and adulterates the food. Then to keep
herself from being robbed she puts everything under lock and key.
The mere presence of the Stranger seems antagonistic to the practices
and low-flying ideals of the boarders and the landlady. They begin to
make all sorts of fun of him. But he takes no notice. Instead he gives
them kindness for unkindness, love for hate, and a pleasant smile as the
only answer to their sarcastic, cutting remarks and innuendoes.
Gradually, as they become better acquainted, he begins to talk to them
of themselves, to point out their good qualities, and to show them what
great ability they have in certain lines, what wonderful things are
possible to them.
He told one of the young men who had made merry at his expense that he
had a fine artistic temperament, and that he had in him the making of a
great artist. He showed another his possibilities as a musician, and so
on with every member of the discordant, jangling group, until each one
finally came under the spell of his love and kindness.
The little London "slavey," or maid-of-all-work who was abused and
constantly reminded that she had been in State Prison and hence was a
nobody, under the Stranger's uplifting influence became a
self-respecting, noble woman. The landlady, who had hitherto treated the
girl like a slave, began to favor her and made her go outdoors and get a
little change while she did the work. A man and wife who had lived a cat
and dog life were brought together in harmony. All of the boarders,
without exception, even those who had been the most brutal and selfish,
gradually changed and became thoughtful, helpful and kindly toward one
another. They became friends. The whole atmosphere of the house was
changed. The Stranger had shown every man and woman of them his or her
better self, and in so doing had literally made them anew.
Thus did one who typified the Christ spirit, a simple, quiet man who
loved his fellowmen and who found his greatest joy in serving others,
manage to divert all of these people out of the crooked channels in
which they had lived and into the right path toward happiness. Love,
discovering to them these higher possible selves, transformed them. THIS
IS LOVE'S WAY.
Love tames the fiercest animals. How quickly their wild, ferocious
expression is replaced by a milder, softer, more gentle one under the
kindly treatment of one who really loves them, one who looks upon them
as did St. Francis, as his "little dumb brothers and sisters." The brute
nature is gradually softened and distrust gives way to confidence. The
suspicious look is replaced by a trustful one. Affection takes the place
of dislike and fear; love goes out to meet love. Is there any more
beautiful illustration in Nature of the influence of love and kindly
treatment than the evolution of our pet dogs from the ferocious wolf?
Note the gentle, peaceful face of a cow or a horse which has been
brought up as a family pet. Such animals would not step on or injure a
child any more than we would ourselves. We love and trust them and they
love and trust us in return. Love begets love.
Some people mistake selfishness or self-love for real love. Everywhere
we see the sort of base substitute which says, "If you do this for me
I'll do that for you." The woman that says to a man, in her heart, if
not with her lips, "If you'll support me and give me a home, I'll love
you," does not love. This is selfishness. A great many people confuse
love of the thing given with love of the giver. They mistake the love of
their own comforts, of a good time, of dress and luxuries, for love of
the person who supplies them with these things. This is a mere travesty
of the genuine thing. Love simply loves and asks nothing in return.
There is no self in it. Abuse, bitterness, indifference, ingratitude do
not change or destroy love. It simply loves on. And no love is ever
lost, whether it is returned or not. Genuine love is a force that
always wins out. Even if it is not reciprocated it wins by chastening,
softening, elevating, beautifying and enriching the life of the one who
loves. THIS IS LOVE'S WAY.
What mothers endure for many years for their children would kill them or
drive them to an insane asylum in half the time but for love. This is
the healing balm that cures all hurts, lightens all burdens, that takes
the drudgery out of service. It is love alone that enables the poor
mother to risk her life for her child, to go through terrible
experiences in her struggles with poverty and sickness to rear her
children. A burden half as great which had no love in it would crush the
life out of her. But love lightens the load, takes the sting out of
poverty, the pain out of sacrifice.
The same thing is true of the loving father, though his burden in the
nature of things is rarely as heavy as the mother's. But he is often
virtually a slave for half a lifetime or more for those he loves, and if
he is a real man he does not complain. Love lightens the burden and
cheers the way. Where the heart is, there the burden is light.
"A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another; as I have
loved you love ye also one another."
In the literal fulfilling of this commandment lies the salvation of the
world. Among the many noble souls of our own time who have tried to live
in accordance with it, one of the most conspicuous was Count Leo
Tolstoy. In one of his own beautiful stories Tolstoy shows how every
one, no matter what his station or how poor his circumstances, may do
this, by following the Master's example in treating every human being as
we would a loved member of our own family.
A very devout Russian peasant, so runs the story, had prayed for years
that the Master might sometime come to his humble cabin home. One night
he had a vision in which the Master appeared to him, and told him He
would come to his cabin next day.
Filled with joy, the peasant awoke. So real seemed his vision that he
arose and immediately went to work putting his cabin to rights and
preparing for the expected heavenly guest.
A terrible storm of sleet and snow raged throughout the day. While
performing his simple household duties, heaping fresh logs in his crude
fireplace, preparing his pot of cabbage soup, the Russian peasant's
daily dish, the man would look out into the storm with anxious,
expectant eyes. Presently he saw a poor half-frozen peddler with a pack
on his back struggling toward the light, but almost overcome by the
fierce blasts of snow and sleet that beat upon him. The peasant rushed
out and brought the wayfarer into his cabin. He dried his clothing,
warmed him, fed him some of the cabbage soup, and started him on his way
again, comforted and rejoicing.
In a little while he saw another traveler, a poor old woman, trying
feebly to beat her way against the blinding snow. Her also the
compassionate peasant took into his cabin. He warmed and fed her,
wrapped his own coat about her, and, strengthened and encouraged, sent
her too on her way.
The day wore slowly away and darkness approached, but still no sign of
the Master. Hoping against hope, the man went once again to his cabin
door, and looking out into the storm he saw a little child, who was
utterly unable to make its way against the blinding sleet and ice. He
took the half-frozen child in his arms, brought it into the cabin,
warmed and fed it, and soon the little wanderer fell asleep before the
fire.
Sorely disappointed because the Master had not appeared, the peasant sat
gazing into the fire, and as he gazed he fell asleep. Suddenly the room
was radiant with a light that did not come from the fire, and there
stood the Master, white-robed, and serene, looking upon him with a
smile. "Ah, Master, I have waited and watched all this long day, but
thou didst not come." The Master replied, "Three times have I visited
thy cabin to-day. The poor peddler whom thou rescued, warmed and fed,
that was I; the poor woman to whom thou gavest thy coat, that was I; and
this little child whom thou hast saved from the tempest, that is I.
Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, you have done it
unto me."
The Christ vision faded. The peasant awoke. He was alone with the child,
who was smiling in its sleep. But he knew that the Master had visited
his cabin.
"The love of God! _The love of God!_" I said,--
And at the words through all my being went
A sudden shudder of light; the firmament
Not otherwise seems riven by the red
Jagg'd lightning-flash that quivers overhead
When for an instant heaven and earth are blent.
So for a dazzling space my heart was rent,
And I beheld--beheld--but all had fled.
Had fled! nor has returned; yet on my way
Along the pave or through the clanging mart,
Sometimes a stranger's eye falls full on mine;
"You too?" We have no speech, we make no sign,
But something seems to pass from heart to heart,
And I am full of gladness all that day.
C. A. PRICE in _Scribner's Magazine_.