THE CULTIVATION OF LOVE

Love is so akin to our nature, so eager to enter our souls, that to want is to get it; to seek is to find it; to open our hearts to its presence is to discover it already there. Whoever knows what true prayer is--the intense, eager yearning for good of insistent, importunate hearts--knows that there never was and never can be one unanswered prayer. No man who has longed to have Love the law of his life, and struggled for it as a miser struggles for money, or a politician strives to win votes, ever failed to get what he wanted. For every person we meet gives occasion for Love, and every situation in life affords a chance to express it.

The difficulty is not to get all we want, but to want all we can have for the asking.

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you, for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, who, if his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone, or if he shall ask for a fish, will give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?"

Love will not grow in our hearts without deep, unseen communion with the Spirit of Love, who is G.o.d. To dwell reverently on the Infinite Love; to keep in one's heart a sacred place where His holy name is adored; to eagerly seek for Love's coming in our own hearts, in the hearts of all men, and in all the affairs of the world; to gratefully receive all material blessings as gifts for use in Love's service; to beseech for ourselves and bestow on others that forgiveness which is Love's att.i.tude toward our human frailties and failings; to fortify ourselves in advance against the allurements of sense, and the base desire to gain good for ourselves at cost of evil to others; to remember that all right rule, all true strength, all worthy honour inhere in and flow from Love, and Love's Father, G.o.d,--to do this day by day sincerely and simply without formality or ostentation,--this is to pray, and to insure prayer's inevitable answer--a life through which Love freely flows to bless both the world and ourselves.

"And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee. And in praying use not vain repet.i.tions, as the Gentiles do; for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them; for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."

Our only ground of a.s.surance that Love forgives us is our loving forgiveness of others. In the light of that fact of experience it is easy and obvious to believe that the Father whose children we are, is not less loving and forgiving than we. If we restore to our esteem and friendship those who have wronged us, then we are sure that Love at the heart of the Universe, Love in the Father, Love in all the Father's true children, fully and freely forgives us. If we have this experience of our own forgiveness of our fellows, we know that Love would not be Love, but hate, G.o.d would not be G.o.d, but a devil, if any sincerely repented wrong or shortcoming of which we have been guilty could remain unforgiven.

"For if ye forgive men their trespa.s.ses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespa.s.ses, neither will your Father forgive your trespa.s.ses."

To judge harshly another man's failings, however bad they may be, shows that we are less loving than he. For he may have failed through strength of appet.i.te, or heat of pa.s.sion,--failings that are still consistent with Love; but harsh judgment has no such excuse, and is therefore a deadly--that is, loveless--sin. We would never think of proclaiming to the idly curious or the coldly critical the failings of one whom we love; hence proclamations of any one's failings is a sure sign that we have no Love for him, and as long as there are any whom we do not love and protect, we have no part or lot in the great Love of G.o.d. Yet such charitableness does not forbid our practical judgment of the difference between sheep and wolves, good men and bad, when important issues are involved. That Love requires. What it forbids is the rolling as a sweet morsel under our tongue, and the gleeful recital to others, of the mistake or the sin of another, as something in which we take mean delight because we think it makes him inferior to ourselves.

"Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me cast out the mote out of thine eye, and lo, the beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Love will waste no time trying to explain itself to the selfish. If Love does not commend itself by its own light and warmth to a man, no forms of words can make him understand it. The sensual, the greedy, the hard, and the cruel Love will treat as gently and kindly as circ.u.mstances permit; yet expect as a matter of course that they will interpret Love's justice as hardness, kindness as weakness, temperance as asceticism, forbearance as cowardice, sacrifice as stupidity. Those who love will not mind being misunderstood by those who do not; knowing that any attempted explanation would only increase their conceit and hardness of heart, and so make a bad matter worse.

"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine, lest haply they trample them under their feet, and turn and rend you."

Since Love is "the greatest thing in the world," we are bound to stand ready with girt loins, and trimmed, burning lamps, to shed its light far and wide. To cover it up would be to deprive ourselves and our fellows of the one sight in all the world best worth seeing, and so to hinder its spread. False modesty that would keep Love's good works out of sight is as bad as false pride that would thrust oneself forward. Though works done merely to be seen are not good at all, yet good works genuinely done for Love's sake gain added influence and l.u.s.tre when frankly and freely allowed to be seen as the beautiful things that they are. The Christian is under spiritual compulsion to be a missionary. Other systems draw their little circles of disciples about them, as Jesus drew His twelve. One cannot hold what he believes to be a true and helpful view of life without wishing to communicate it to others. Yet this tendency, which is natural to every principle, is characteristic of Christianity in a unique degree. For the Christian Spirit consists in Love, the desire to give to others the best one has. And what can be so good, so desirable to impart, as this very Spirit of Love, which is Christianity itself? That is why the Christian must, in some form or other,--by journeying to foreign lands, by contribution to missionary work at home, by gifts to Christian education, by support of settlement work, or perhaps best of all by the silent diffusion of a Christian example in the neighbourhood, or the unnoticed expression of the Christian Spirit in the home,--be a propagator of the Spirit of Love he has himself received.

"Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.

Neither do men light a lamp and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house. Even so let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

VI

THE BLESSEDNESS OF LOVE

Does virtue bring happiness? is a question every philosophy of life must meet. Yet before it can be rightly answered it must be rightly put.

For if by virtue you mean something negative, conventional,--not lying, not cheating, not swearing, not drinking; and if by happiness you mean something pa.s.sive, external,--riches, offices, entertainments, and honours; then virtue and happiness do not necessarily go together in life, and no philosophy can show that they should.

If a man were to persuade himself that they do go together, and should seek this sort of happiness by cultivating this sort of virtue, he would miss true virtue and true happiness. For both virtue and happiness are positive, active; so interrelated that the happiness must be found in that furtherance of our common social interests in which the exercise of virtue consists.

Jesus bids us take an active, devoted interest in the interests of others and of society. Now whoever shares and serves a wide range of interests has an interested, and therefore an interesting, life. But the interesting life is the happy life. Love, whether it has much or little wealth and station, always has interests and aims; always finds or makes friends to share them,--in other words, is always happy.

The beat.i.tudes are ill.u.s.trations of this deep ident.i.ty between interest taken and happiness found; statements of the truth that Love going out to serve and share the interests and aims of others, and blessedness flowing in to fill the heart thereby enlarged for its reception, are the outside and inside of the same spiritual experience.

To think little of self is the key to the joy that goes with much thought for others.

Love is so going out to others as to make them as real as self. But that is what no man puffed up with self-importance can do. Where self is much in the foreground others are pushed to the rear. Self-importance and Love cannot dwell together in the same house of clay. As one goes up in the scales of the balance the other goes down. To be rich in the shared lives of others one must be poor in his own self-esteem. The two are in inverse proportion. Modesty is impossible of direct cultivation. It isn't safe to talk or even think about it much. As Pascal remarks, "Few people talk of humility humbly." Like Love it is the manifestation of something deeper than itself. Unless one is in intimate personal relations with one whom he reveres as greater, stronger, better than himself, it is obviously impossible for him to be modest. If he is in such relations, it is equally impossible for him not to be modest.

Hence, as Love is the inmost quality of the Christian, the inevitable manifestation to his fellow-men of what the Father is to him, so modesty is the surest outward sign of this inward grace. Conceit is a public proclamation of the poverty of one's personal relations. For if this conceited fellow, this vain woman, really had the honour of the intimate acquaintance of some one better and greater than their petty, miserable selves, they could not possibly be the vain, conceited creatures that they are. Every one who lives in the presence of the great Father, and walks in the company of His glorious Son, is sure to find modesty and humility the natural and spontaneous expression of his side of these great relationships. "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Our shortcomings frankly confessed prepare us for Love's consolation.

We all fall short of that patient consideration, that courteous kindliness, which makes the feelings and interests of others as precious as our own. Some of us fail in one way, some in another. But we all are unprofitable servants of the Love that would make our lives one with all the lives that we touch. To forget or deny that we fail is to lose sight of Love altogether. He who thinks he succeeds thereby shows that he fails; he who knows and laments that he fails comes as near as man can to the goal.

Love neither asks nor expects a clean record; else it would have no disciples. Love fully and freely forgives, at the eleventh hour welcomes the idler, and offers its fulness of joy to all who, whatever their repented past may have been, make service and kindness to others their eager present concern. For no sin frankly confessed, no wrong deed sincerely repented, no loss squarely met, no bereavement bravely endured, can shut out from Love's consolation those who serve with the best there is in them the persons who still need their aid. "Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted."

To meet criticism with kindness, crossness with geniality, insult with courtesy, and injury with charity is the way to conquer the world.

By nature we are creatures of suggestion. A hateful look, an ugly word, a spiteful sneer, a cruel blow, make us hateful and ugly and spiteful and cruel in turn. For the empty heart flashes back in resentment whatever att.i.tude another's act suggests.

Meekness greets as a friend the just critic, and for unjust and unkind treatment makes allowance as due to the blindness or hardness or weakness of the pitiful person who has nothing better to give. Meekness makes the soft answer that turns away wrath, and treats one who wrongs us all the more gently. Thus the meekness of Love gives both power to possess our own souls in patience under all provocation, and power, not indeed to coerce the bodies of others, but to win the consent of their souls. "Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth."

Righteousness is something of which we can have no more and no less than we wish.

He who is good enough is not good at all, and never will be any better.

For righteousness is right relation to others; and so long as there are things we can do to help others, its infinite task is unfinished. Yet though the goal ever advances and never comes within reach, aspiration is achievement; progress is attainment. If we could come to the end of our journey; if we could see the world's claims on us met, the deeds of which we are capable done, that moment would mark the death of our souls. Just because Love grows by loving and serving, and makes ever greater and greater demands, it prophesies there shall be forever and ever things to do that will make life worth while. "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled."

The depth of our sympathy for those below us in secular service and station measures our worth in the eyes of those spiritually higher than we.

Love is like a tree; if it is not to be scorched in the blaze of ambition and withered in the heat of compet.i.tion, its roots of sympathy must go down as deep into the soil of the obscure and lowly lives on whose humble toil we depend as its branches spread into the upper air of social distinction and station.

Unless we have much sympathy for those who toil on the farm and on the sea, in the factory and the mine, behind the counter and the desk, in the kitchen and laundry, what we call courtesy in the drawing room, or charity on the platform, is hollow mockery and Pharisaic sham. "Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy."

In order for Love to shine through them there must be nothing else in our hearts.

Love demands everything or nothing. It refuses to dwell in quarters or halves of our souls. The least flaw of pride, greed, or l.u.s.t is enough to make them opaque. Greed, l.u.s.t, pride, hate, so blind our eyes to the real selves of others that we cannot see or treat them as they really are; that is, cannot love them. It reduces them to mere means and tools of our pa.s.sions and pleasures; and one who so regards persons can never love either them or any person aright. Only the pure can see Love; for only the pure can experience that union of one's whole self with the whole self of others in which Love consists. "Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see G.o.d."

Just so sure as we love two or more persons we shall do all in our power to keep them from hating each other.

We wish everyone to love those whom we love. If anybody hates one we love, it hurts us as much as it does the one hated, even more than it would to be hated ourselves. And if anyone whom we love is hating another, we are even more sorry for him than we are for the person he hates, and make all haste to deliver him from this most dreadful condition. The more we love our fellows, the more we hate to see misunderstanding, ill-will, strife, between them.

Not that the Christian is unwilling or afraid to fight. Where deliberate wrong is arrayed against the rights of men, where fraud is practised on the unprotected, where hypocrisy imposes on the credulous, where vice betrays the innocent, where inefficiency sacrifices precious human interests, where avarice oppresses the poor, where tyranny tramples on the weak, there the man who shares the Father's Love for His maltreated children, the man who walks daily in the companionship of the Christ who owns all the downtrodden as His brothers, will be the most fearless and uncompromising foe of every form of injustice and oppression. Property, reputation, position, time, strength, influence, health, life itself if need be, will be thrown unreservedly into the fight against vice and sin. He cannot keep in with the Father and with Christ and not come out in opposition to everything that wrongs and injures the humblest man, the lowliest woman, the most defenceless little child.

Fighting, however, is not altogether uncongenial to the descendants of our brute progenitors. To fight our own battles, and occasionally a few for our neighbours, comes all too naturally to most of us. Fighting G.o.d's battles on principle is a very different thing. To feel entirely tranquil in the midst of the combat; to know that we are not alone on the side of the right; to have the real interests of our opponents at heart all the time; to be ever ready to forgive them, and to ask their forgiveness for any excess of zeal we may have shown; to have the peace of G.o.d in our hearts, and no trace of malice, in deed, or word, or thought, or feeling,--this is not altogether natural, and the man who does his fighting on that basis gives pretty good a.s.surance of dwelling in the Christian Spirit. No other adequate provision for maintaining peace in the midst of effective warfare, and making peace for others as well as for ourselves the instant the need for war is over, has ever been devised. The peacemakers of this fearless, earnest, strenuous type have the unmistakable right to be called the children of G.o.d. "Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of G.o.d."

All who love must expect to be hated by the foes of those whom they love.

Because Jesus loved the common people and sought to deliver them from their fears and errors, the men who traded on those fears and errors put Him to an ignominious death. If we love and serve the despised, the abused, the plundered, those who despise and abuse and plunder them will do to us the worst they dare. The road of Love is marked at every turn by a cross. Whoever in business, society, or politics makes as real as his own the interests and the wrongs of all whom he can reach and touch, will be disliked, criticised, misrepresented, vilified, condemned. He will pay Love's price of persecution.

Christian sacrifice closely resembles Greek temperance and courage.

There is, however, this essential distinction. The Christian takes on not merely the pains and privations which are essential to his personal welfare, or the welfare of his community or state; he takes on whatever suffering the Father's Love for all His children calls him to undergo; gives up whatever indulgences the service of Christ requires him to dispense with; adopts whatever mingling of hardship and self-denial will keep him in most effective and sympathetic fellowship with those who have discovered the same great spiritual secret as himself. Thus, though to the uninitiated outsider much of his life looks hard and severe, on the inside it is easy and light; for the companionship with the Father, with Christ, and with Christian people is so much greater and dearer than the material and sensuous delights it may incidentally take away, that on the inside it does not wear the aspect of loss and sacrifice at all, but rather that of a glory and a gain. Still, since this element of pleasant things foregone, and hard things endured, is ever present, and since it has to be judged by people on the outside as well as by those on the inside of the experience, in recognition of this truth Christianity has made its symbol before the uninitiated world the cross.

As in the life of the Master, so in the life of every faithful disciple, the cross must be borne, the perpetual sacrifice must be made, as the price of Love's presence in a world of selfishness and hate; but the cross is transfigured into a crown of rejoicing, the sacrifice is transformed into privilege and pleasure by those precious personal relationships which are the supreme glory and gladness of the soul, and which could be maintained on no cheaper terms. The sacrifice that the Christian makes to get his Father's will, his Master's mission, accomplished in the world which so sorely needs it, is like the sacrifice a mother makes for her sick and suffering child,--the dearest and sweetest experience of life. The cross thus gladly borne, the yoke of sacrifice thus unostentatiously a.s.sumed, is the supreme expression of the Christian Spirit.

Like all high-cost things, sacrifice for Love's sake carries a high premium. It admits, as nothing else does, to the inner circle of the immortal lovers of their fellows, to the intimate fellowship of the Lord of Love, Jesus Christ.

Joy follows incidentally and inevitably from the maintenance of these great Christian relationships. A gloomy, depressed, despondent tone and temper, unless it be demonstrably pathological, is public proclamation that the deep mines of these Christian relationships, with their inexhaustible resources, are either undeveloped or unworked. For no man who looks through sunshine and shower, through food and raiment, through family and friendship, through society and the moral order of the world, up into the face of the Giver of them all as his Father; who knows how to summon to his side the gentle and gracious companionship of Christ, alike in the pressure of perplexity and in the quiet of solitude; who knows how to unlock the treasures of Christian literature, to appropriate the meaning of Christian worship, and to avail himself of the comfort and support that is always latent in the hearts of his Christian friends,--no man in whom these vast personal resources are developed and employed can ever long remain disconsolate.

Even in prosperity, popularity, and outward success it takes considerable mixture of these deeper elements to keep the tone of life constantly on the high level of joy. But adversity is the real test.

Then the man without these interior resources gives way, breaks down, becomes querulous, fretful, irritable, sour. On the other hand, the man who can make mistakes, and take the criticism they bring, and go on as cheerfully as if no blunder had been made and no vote of censure had been pa.s.sed; the man who can be hated for the good things he tries to do, and condemned for bad things he never did and never meant to do; the man who can work hard, and contentedly take poverty for pay; the man who can serve devotedly people who revile and betray him in return; the man who can discount in advance the unpopularity, misrepresentation, and defeat a right course will cost, and then resolutely set about it; the man who takes persecution and treachery as serenely as other men take honours and emoluments,--this man, we may be sure, has dug deep an invested heavily in the field where the priceless Christian treasure lies concealed.

"Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."