God is Love.—1 John iv. 8.
Three short words: three little words, if considered only etymologically. They are so short, so simple that a little child, just exploring its way out into the world of talk, can easily repeat them,— can readily learn to spell them. Simple indeed they are, yet what marvelous depth, sweetness, brightness, life, truth, joy, and power are in them. Mild, yet powerful; gentle, but possessing a fullness, a majesty which makes them the most wonderful of words. When our finite thought takes in their completeness, their fullness, their compass and all-inclusiveness, it will be finite thought no more. But can finite thought grasp them? No, never! The most it can do is to begin with them, for when the finite sense has vanished, the divine consciousness will stand, fully understanding the infinite magnitude of these words: for then all speech will be but multitudinous expressions of the one thought, "God is Love, and Love is God." Love will be All in all.
Before drawing out the lesson these words have for us, it will not be amiss to call attention to the fact that humanity is beginning to awaken to its need, its hunger for Love. Witness the sermons and utterances which pour in from a thousand sources, all attesting this one thing. Why, our age is beginning to become irenic instead of polemic I say beginning, for it has not advanced far along this line; for when it does advance in the heavenly way, how it must chemicalize. It must unlearn all it has learned. It will learn that its sense of Love is not Love at all. A new creation will begin at this initial point, for it will then be seen that Love is not a thing of the carnal senses at all.
