In its ordinary sense, love signifies little else than blind, selfish passion which seeks only self-enjoyment and ends in envy, hate, revenge, crime. Looking over the world and analyzing its motives and aims, we learn, time and again, the same old lesson,—love accompanied by hate, jealousy, revenge, leading to some terrible denouement.
Sometimes we come across the phenomenon of love which seems willing to sacrifice all,—even life itself—for the object on which it is lavished, yet, if there be no thought of God in it, it is intensely partial and is strained and unnatural, really evil,—"all of self and none of Thee." Such love will often say, "If I cannot have my heart's desire, I would rather die." Sometimes under this stress it does die, and the blind world calls it loyalty.
Sometimes it is true that love is chastened by affliction and trial, its human and passionate propensity destroyed, and then it stands out in the white pure light of unselfishness; then only does it reflect the divine hues. Love approaches the love of the Supreme Good in proportion to its impartiality and its element of self-sacrifice; witness the mother-love, changeless, through blow after blow, or the disinterested love of an unbroken friendship. Human love untainted with selfishness and sensuality approaches" Love divine, all love excelling."
