What a word. I am in awe before it! Over what worlds of worlds it hath range and is sovereign; the underived, the incomparable, the infinite all of good, the alone of God. By what strange perversity is the best the most abused, either as a quality or an entity? Mortals misrepresent and miscall love; name it what it is not, and doubt what it is. The so-called love nursing its victim for a prey, is like the butcher fattening the lamb to shed his blood. What is expressed by the lower propensities should be repressed by the sentiments. No word is more misconstrued, no sentiment less understood. Its divine significance is distorted into human qualities, in its human abandon it becomes jealousy and hate.
I shall never admit that love is something to be laid on a shelf, and taken down upon rare occasions with sugar-tongs and laid on a rose leaf. I make great demands upon it, call for active witnesses of it, and noble sacrifices and grand achievements from it; and unless these appear I cast aside the word as a counterfeit having not the ring of the true coin. It cannot be a mere abstraction, or goodness without power and presence. As a human quality, give me its glorious significance that means more than words: the tender unselfish deed done in secret, the silent ceaseless prayer, the heart that overflows, a veiled form stealing out of a side door, little feet tripping along the sidewalk, gentle hands hold of the door-knob that opens upon scenes of sickness and sorrow, and lightens the dark places of sin and death.
Patient, hopeful, true, uncompromising, love comes gently as the morning dew or summer rain, to meet the need of poor humanity, drop the supply and depart. It cannot waste a moment, it has work on hand, is never idle, always prompt, and you may know it is God's evangel, not by the rustle of wings but the odor of divinity.
