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pleasures, let us regard the spirit, and feed and nurse and develope it, so as to make it strong and powerful, ready at a moment's notice to do battle for us, and to overcome the insinuating enemies to our happiness, namely worldliness, materialism and selfishness.

O happiness, our being's ends aim,

Good, pleasure, peace, content! whate'er thy name;

Say in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow?
Where grows, where grows it not! If vain our toil,
We ought to blame the culture, not the soil :

Some placeth bliss in action, some in ease,
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these.

Obvious her goods, in no extremes they dwell;

There needs but thinking right and meaning well. A. Pope.

A perfect trust in God, an absolute obedience to his will, as evidenced in our consciences, must lead us to the coveted goal, and though there may be many backslidings and many weary hours, God will shelter us under the shadow of His wings, for are climbing the steep and difficult path in order to be with Him who is our salvation (happiness)?

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CHAPTER VIII.

LOVE.

LOVE is the ideal of all moral and esthetic perfection, and in more than one theosophical system love is represented, not only as the moving principle of the whole immaterial world, but love is regarded likewise as the motive power of even the material world. That is to say, love created, love animates and love pervades the world, substantial or insubstantial, real and ideal, and as God is the Creator, the soul and the life of the Universe, God is Love personified. This is the sum total of all theology, but it has found its strongest expression in the Christian system, which is called the religion of love par excellence. Now, as God must be the model for His human creatures, His essential attribute, that of love, should rule their existence, it should create every impulse, it should animate and pervade their whole being.

A Trinity there seems of principles,
Which represent and rule created life

The love of self, our fellows and our God.
All are compatible,—and needful; one

To life, to virtue one, and one to bliss,

Which thus together make the power, the end

And the perfection of created being.-(P. 7 Bailey.).

Love is a divine quality, and in as far as we share in it, our own natures will become God-like. It is a privilege without which human life would be a blank, an approach and worship of the Deity

inconceivable, a peaceful herding together of men impossible, family life a caricature, and faith in the immortality of the soul a mockery. Without love the human race, notwithstanding all imaginable faculties, would never have advanced a step beyond the animal, and darkest night would cover our intelligence.

Yes, love indeed is light from Heaven,

A spark of that immortal fire,

With angels shared, by Allah given,

To lift from earth our low desires.-(Byron).

Love is the ozone that breathes over the waves of eternity and invigorates and revivifies every fainting soul; the iron that gives strength to our frame; the phosphorus that illumines our brain; and the manna which nourishes our spirit. Oh glorious Lord, we sink adoringly on our knees before Thee, lost in gratitude and love, for this Thy gift unto us. Thou hast loved us first, and hast taught us to love Thee again; Thou hast planted love into our hearts, an evergrowing plant, which expands its branches until it shelters beneath its shade the whole human race. Who can fathom the depths of Thy love to us; who can sound the profundity of Thy loving purposes! Let us merge our beings in the ocean of Thy love; let us disappear in it, being absorbed by Thy divine love.

God, being love, in love created all,

As He contains the whole and penetrates.-(Bailey).

Unless we deliver ourselves up, pleased slaves, to the impulses of love, all our boasted superiority over the animal, all our intelligence, all our spiritual prerogatives, remain immobile, inactive, dead. If we do not love, then the loving object of God in creating us will have been frustrated, and by dispensing with love we abandon all the blessings which God had intended for us. We stand lost in admiration when contemplating the unsearchable riches of God's wisdom and love.

Father and Friend, Thy light, Thy love,

Beaming through all Thy works we see,
Thy glory girds the heaven above,

And all the earth is full of Thee.-(Sir John Bowring).

The love of God is too vast a theme to be attempted here. The best expositor of this love is the man who loves God most, for defective though the most perfect human love to God must be, and unsatisfactory though a delineation of God's love must be in consequence, the nearest approach to apprehending the love of God must be made by him, who loves most in return, for our love to God is nothing more nor less than a comprehension of His love to us. It is therefore in reviewing our love to God further on that God's love to man can be gauged as far as lies in us to do so. There are some depths in the ocean which the heaviest lead will not reach, because the lengthening line will float a proportionate weight of iron or lead. And so also, in attempting to fathom divine love, our most profound conceptions are buoyed up long before reaching the bottom. Our love to God is the lead that tends downwards to explore the wonders of the deep, but our material and sentimental

nature, ie, the flesh with its affections and lusts, connects us with the upper world, buoys up our desire and prevents our love from sinking to the very bottom. The thicker the rope, the less the depth to which the lead will sink; the thinner the rope, (the looser we sit on the world) the greater the profundity to which the lead will descend.

The different manifestations of love are so closely interwoven with each other that it is difficult to draw any definite boundary lines. We have seen already that the love to God must be the moving principle of all other descriptions of love, if they are to deserve the name of love at all, and similarly earthly loves are very much dependent on each other.

Truly, to love ourselves we must love God,

To love God, we must all His creatures love,

To love His creatures, both ourselves and Him.

So love is all that's wise, fair, good and happy.-(Bailey).

There are certain characteristics about love which are common to all in all its manifold varieties :

I. LOVE IS ETERNAL.

Love is indestructible,

Its holy flame for ever burneth,

From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.

Too oft on earth a troubled guest.-(R. Southey).

2. LOVE IS JOYFUL.

Is there a greater happiness conceivable than that of loving and of being beloved? Is not every pleasure like sand and ashes in our mouths if deprived of sympathy? Are we not ready to sacrifice everything for love, and is not this a proof that love must be the highest good, the most enjoyable sensation we can imagine? The misery of the heart destitute of love is indescribable, and so is also the joy of the heart which is filled with love.

3. LOVE IS FEARLESS,

Both subjectively and objectively. With the glove of his ladylove in his bosom the champion despises every danger; knowing ourselves protected by love, we look death dauntlessly in the face: Why should I fear? the boy replied,"

My father's at the helm !

4. LOVE IS LOYAL.

"Though every one be offended in Thee, I shall not be offended." Though you be despised, reviled, poor and friendless, love will not take account of it, for in her eye a halo of glory surrounds the beloved object which no eclipse of the sun of fortune can obscure.

5. LOVE IS TRUTHFUL.

Can any sentiment which springs from God be otherwise than Can falsehood and deceit be the companion of unselfish devotion? Love and Truth and Goodness are sisters, with God for a father and the human heart for a mother. They are the three

graces clad in spotless white, and resemble each other so much that only the parents can discern each one's peculiarity.

6. LOVE IS BEAUTIFUL,

For really beauty is only another name for love; and only beautiful things are loved. Whatever sheds beauty upon every object around as love does, is indeed beauty personified; in like manner in which the sun might be called "the light" as being the centre of light, and as dispelling darkness, wherever his glorious rays are allowed to fall.

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God has in His love distributed love so, that there is no desert heart without its oasis, no meadow without its flower, no night without its star. "There is a green spot in every one's heart," and this green spot is love. There is no soil so sterile, no heart so selfish that love could not thrive in, and luxuriantly too, in some cases. The barbarian as well as the metropolitan, the Jew as well as the Gentile, the rich as well as the poor, have the sentiment of love in common, and the simple love of the latter is often stronger and more vital than the hyper-refined affection of the former.

8. LOVE IS EXPIATORY.

"Her sins which were many are forgiven, for she loved much :" (Luke vii., 47). The child who loves the parent is easily forgiven any of his shortcomings; love is regarded as a counterpoise to defects and faults innumerable; even the very act of forgiveness increases the love of the forgiver as well as that of the one forgiven.

9. LOVE IS RECIPROCAL.

"We love Him, because He first loved us." (John iv., 19.) The Greeks had their Eros and Anteros, two distinct deities, but so exactly alike that they could hardly be distinguished from each other. In fact, it is difficult to decide in most cases which heart originated, and which responded to, the first impulse of love. Who will decide that particular spot in the universe where the electric spark originated that caused the discharge of the celestial battery? Without Anteros, Eros must die. There is no love without a return. If there be no interchange of hearts where is the love?

10. LOVE IS JEALOUS.

As Alexander I will reign,

And I will reign alone;

My thoughts did evermore disdain

A rival on my throne."-(Marq. of Montrose.)

II. LOVE IS BLIND.

Cupid is represented blindfold, in the same manner as Fortune and Justice, but for different reasons. The divine love is not a blind one, because God is not blind. Our love to God may be called blind, because we can only partially comprehend the beloved object; but it is not the blindness referred to. This consists

in the disposition on the part of the loving subject of overlooking anything unlovely in the beloved object; of investing it in his imagination with excellent qualities, whether they really exist or not; to please the beloved object even at the cost of self; and in short of bestowing love on an object, independent of its intrinsic worth, and in such a manner as to forget every other thing over it, and of having it alone in view.

12. LOVE IS HOPEFUL.

There is no manifestation of our spiritual life which is more sanguine in its working than love. "Charity is not easily provoked... beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things" (1 Cor. xiii.). Its very blindness is a sign of hope; and charity (love) and tolerance have become synonymous terms in colloquial language. Let us judge others charitably, i. e., lovingly. Loves' hopefulness shows itself in its kindness, its readiness to forgive, its unfailing trustfulness. Sublime quality! Embodying all virtues, an enemy to all vice.

13. LOVE IS HUMBLE

Humility of mind, the adornment of a meek and quiet spirit, amiability of temper-these are the results of the disposition of the loving subject to acknowledge its inferiority to the beloved object. Love can never struggle for mastery, because it is satisfied with a handmaid's position; and where there is tyranny or contest love is absent.

14. LOVE IS OMNIPOTENT.

Not only love in the abstract, but all love is almighty, relatively speaking. No sacrifice is too great for love, no efforts two strenuous when love labours for an object. Nothing is impossible to love; for love conquers even the Gods. The little Cupid makes the thunderer to tremble. How wonderful! What a power and humility combined! And the might of love is evidenced, not merely by its being capable of everything, but also by the fact of its sway over all hearts, rich or poor, old or young, man or spirits. There is no speech nor language where its voice is not heard, its power unfelt. God might have created the world and may preserve and destroy it, without love, but how would He conquer our hearts and make us His loving children without its agency?

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength; and thy neighbour as thyself." This sublime command that has been adopted by all schools and by all creeds, contains our privilege and duty to love, and comprises

(1) Subjective love.
(a) Love to God

(b) Love to man

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Love to self =

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(2) Objective love.
(a) Piety.
(b) Sympathy.
(c) Instinct

Reason.
Will.
Sentiment.

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