No phase of human character--of mental or spiritual philosophy--has
engrossed so much attention or received such a variety of treatment as
has human love. Nearly everyone who thinks at all, has been brought,
at some stage of experience, to an attempt at analyzing the emotional,
sentimental nature, asking: "What is Love?"
In contradistinction to that which repels, and disintegrates, it is
attraction. Love is God, it draws elements together, and holds them in
proper spheres. It centralizes and builds up. It is controlled by
fixed laws; it is only "blind" to those who have not investigated its
nature, and office unshrinkingly, with an eye to a complete
understanding of its true function. Devoted humanitarians have shown
us how to feed, exercise, and rest the physical system, in order to
produce health. Ministers of the Gospel have taught souls the way of
life ever-lasting. Professors of the various sciences and arts, useful
and ornamental, have instructed the intellects of men, and now and then
a woman; but with all these, the affections--the crowning--rather the
integral element of all life and being, have had few, or no exponents
who have ever attempted to treat them from any basis which can be
called philosophical, or which could ever serve as a guide to one
uninitiated in their occult phases.
The ordinary expression of this part of the nature, is a vampyrism
which is constantly on the alert to see what, and how much it can
gobble up for its own delectation. This is the lowest grade. It
begins with the selfism of the individual, its manifestations are named
lust. It seeks expression through the sensuous nature, but extends to
the spirit and will.
O Love! What crimes are committed in thy name! What laying waste of
true and tender hearts, what defacing of sweet bodies, fashioned and
set up as temples of the spirit!
This vampyrism extends through every department of the affectional
nature. It exists not only among men and women recognized as lovers,
married or otherwise, but parents are ghouls to their children, and
friends devour each other without stint. Attraction is that law which
draws together two opposite elements or forces, positive and negative,
or male and female. As the nature and attributes of a human being are
multiform, so are the attractions, or loves, numerous. Ignorance of
the laws which ought to control and adjust these loves, is the prime
cause of all the misery and crime with which the earth is flooded. Two
people of the opposite sex are attracted through the intellect on this
plane, and realizing the limit of the law which draws them together,
they could be admiring friends forever; but ignorant of their needs
outside of this, they attempt to force a conjugal relationship which
too often ends in dislike. Every grade of lust and love finds
representation in the so-called marriage relation, as it stands today.
Intellects and spirits without any bodies--worth mentioning--and gross
mortal remains unvitalized by souls. The former class ignore the
claims of the physical, and gather their robes together sanctimoniously
indicating: "Avaunt, lest my purity be contaminated"; while the latter
laugh their spiritual pride and fastidiousness to scorn. The war goes
on between good and evil, whereas there is really no just ground for
difference. All that is needed for the attainment of harmony and peace
is a wise adjustment of these forces in individuals and in society.
* * * * * *
The growth of all true character must be slow and gradual. It is not
enough that the soul perceives the beauty of a grand, moral life, it
must also learn to live it humbly, earnestly and truly.
"IDEALS OF LOVE."
"Greater love hath no man than that he shall give his life for
another," whether the scene be set upon the mimic stage, or on the
broad theatre of the world. Heroic rescues, desperate efforts to save
endangered lives, care of the battle-wounded or fatally diseased meet,
from great and small, brutal and cultivated, deserved recognition, even
to the extent of making the individual actors--so favored by the
gods--famous, throughout the world.
The patient service of men and women to their families, of children to
their parents, or of friends who rejoice in serving, that goes on all
around us conforms so entirely with our established ideals of what is
right and becoming, that it is unnoticed and wins no applause, but
oftener only calls out from the recipient demands for further sacrifice.
In all such related service the real blessing comes to those who give
far more than to those who receive. The operation of this law hallows
all the relationships of this life, and must finally yield to the
unselfish giver undreamed of compensations. Not here, perhaps, but in
that sphere of being where love is indeed the fulfilling of the law,
shall the patient givers, those who have served at love's altars, find
themselves closely allied to the immortal ones, "who do his pleasure."
Love, garlanded, and adorned with all that wealth can bestow, enthroned
in seats of honor, and social recognition is accepted as our ideal of
what love should claim, and win from life; but I have looked into the
faces of humble, patient toilers, and there I have seen that the
sustaining influence with them was love, and have marvelled greatly
over the compelling power of their ideals of love.
Remembering that foundations of love upon this earthly planet were, of
necessity, laid in the selfish instincts of the race--a race as yet so
undeveloped in all that "makes for righteousness"--we need not despair
of the final outcome, and realization of its high behest to the
children of men; for no expression of love, however mean in view of our
own exalted ideals, but is, in reality, an effort towards something
higher and better. The obdurate and selfish are unfolded, and taught
by its painful misunderstandings, and awful tragedies.
Those poor souls who expect everything from this life, whose ideals are
bounded by their own selfishness, who have never discovered that God is
Love, and that only through love, purified, exalted and idealized can
any of his earthly children ever reach to any conscious relationship
with our Father in Heaven, and who, failing to realize even their low
ideals, pass on from one experience to another vainly searching for the
realization of what their dimly perceived intuitions of love constantly
assure them should be theirs--for even such as these there must be a
final redemption; for, like one of old, they have "loved much," and the
sins of a vast ignorance are at last condoned by God's all pervading,
untiring, illimitable law of love.
O ye! who labor for humanity's uplifting; O weary workers in the homely
ways of the unskilled in every relationship of life, unrecognized by
your fellows be ye of good cheer! As the circling waves of a calm lake
spread wider, and more widely from a center disturbed by some heavy
substance, so shall your least word, or thought of pure, unselfish
love, from your overburdened lives, reach out and diffuse an influence
throughout the universe of God, and become a part of the life immortal!
Love, and love alone creates the desire for immortality, lifts up and
renews the oft fainting faith, the faltering, changeful hope, and
perpetuates the expectations of the restoration of beloved companions,
the reunion of families, and friends. It inspires the spirit, and
seals the brokenhearted to the service of "ideal love." It leads the
human soul onward, and upward, until it triumphs, at last, over this
life's defeats and losses, and its manifold despairs.
Undeterred by the alarms of war, the wails of the diseased and
famine-cursed, and the violent protests of the oppressed, and
misery-steeped unfortunates of this plane of being, the "Prince of
Peace" is calling together his scattered forces. The beacon lights
shine along the high places where dwell the exalted, and powerful ones
of earth, and glimmer faintly from the lowlands, where the dire enemies
of mankind--ignorance and superstition--are, at last, learning that
God, the true God, loves, and cannot hate.
The "ground-swell" of the "ideal love" cannot be resisted, nor
overborne by any competing power in the universe, and with
ever-increasing force and power to conquer all of earth's conditions of
unrest, and dissatisfaction, born of false ideals, it will sweep
resistlessly on, until it is merged in God. The recognition of the
homogeneity of the race, and the "Fatherhood of God," shall bring the
longed for fulfillment of the ancient prophecy of "Peace on Earth, and
good will to Man."
* * * * * *
The priests endowed the gods with vices which they knew to be popular
among their rich and powerful patrons.