ONCE a Christian Scientist said to an inquirer, "Love never forgives, never condones, never forgets, for God is Love." The statement fell on startled ears and trembling heart, but when the hearer was enlisted among the "doers of the word," he recognized the lovingkindness and the truth of the declaration. The inquirer had been satisfied to drift with the world's concept of love, content to ask, with the poet,—
Be to [my] virtues very kind;
Be to [my] faults a little blind.
But after a while the glossing over of failings brought with it a corresponding measure of unrest and dissatisfaction, and the false sense of love and adulation palled. Why? During many years this question was uppermost in the mind of the inquirer, but no answer came to relieve its doleful monotony. Life appeared to be a dreary routine, its aims and achievements an endless treadmill; its varied experiences made up of deceitful hopes and sorrows and short-lived joys. Continually the cry went up, What is love? To what end does it forgive and condone and try to forget, only to repeat the weary refrain?
