When Robert Louis Stevenson settled at Samoa, the islands were ablaze
with tumult and strife. And, during those years of bitterness, Stevenson
did his utmost to bring the painful struggle to an end. He visited the
chiefs in prison, lavished his kindnesses upon the islanders, and made
himself the friend of all. In the course of time the natives became
devotedly attached to the frail and delicate foreigner who looked as
though the first gust of wind would blow him away. His health required
that he should live away on the hill-top, and they pitied him as he
painfully toiled up the stony slope. To show their affection for him,
they built a road right up to his house, in order to make the steep
ascent more easy. And they called that road Ala Loto Alofa--_The Road to
the Loving Heart_. They felt, as they toiled at their labor of
gratitude, that they were not only conferring a boon on the white man,
but that they were making a beaten path from their own doors to the
heart that loved them all.
_God is Love_; and it is the glory of the everlasting Gospel that it
points the road by which the Father's wayward sons--in whichever of the
far countries they may have wandered--may find a way back to the
Father's house, and home to the Loving Heart.