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Toronto, in the OflBoe of the Minister of Agriculture LOVE. n Between this mortal and the immortal life Stretches a silken cord of fine-spun thread : And by this mystic, sweet and luminous way, The soul of man from earth to heaven is led. Call it a bridge, that carries precious freight Between us and the unseen world above ; A ray of heaven's own light and kindly warmth, A link 'twixt God and Man— we name it. Love. PREFACE. 'X'HIS book was written with the object of claiming recognition for the great principle that Love underlies religion, and must be the source of all spiritual life and growth. In a half-hearted and perfunctory way this is con- ceded by all religious believers, but it seems to me that the world has taken on such an excessively material hue of late that the old truth needs to be revived and enforced. I have aimed to show in the several chapters that Love in its essence is the same in all its manifestations. It is simply a recognition of the tremendous principle that, while in the natural world, self-preservation is the first law, in the spiritual world the conditions are exactly the reverse, and the first law of spiritual growth is self-sacrifice and self-effacement. Many good persons, of course, will question the right and capacity of a person engaged in vi PREFACE. professional and political work to deal with a subject so essentially belonging to the realm of the spiritual. I venture to think, however, that there is no actual distinction between secular and religious duties. Everything that a man does in this world is done in relation to his eternal destiny. Nothing which it is wrong for a religious teacher to do can be right for a politician to do. Acts in their consequences are immortal — all of them, those done in rela- tion to ordinary worldly duties as well as those done within the walls of the church. It seems to me the special need of the hour that religion should be presented in such a guise that it will commend itself as the coveted equipment of all men and in relation to all duties. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Introduction j CHAPTER II. Manifestations j^ CHAPTER III. Love between Men and Women 21 CHAPTER IV. True Love and False Love CHAPTER V. Matrimonial Mistakes < CHAPTER VI. What Love is Lawful ? . ... 57 CHAPTER VII. What is True Love? ... 70 CHAPTER VIIL Geography g [vii] ^'" CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. Caprices . , , ^^*» 95 CHAPTER X. Married Life . 104 CHAPTER XI. Political and Social . 115 CHAPTER XII. Religion . . "S CHAPTER XIII. Love's Essence . . . 136 CHAPTER XIV. L'envoi .... '44 LOVE'S CRUCIBLE, A Postscript . . 149 LOVE. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. Love is the greatest word in the language — in any language. It must be understood clearly and vitally before its full and tremendous signi- ficance can be realized. What is meant by Love? Not the usual popular definition which relates almost entirely to the relations between the sexes, a very im- portant branch of the subject, but still not im- plying everything that is meant, in its widest sense, by the word Love. We look over the whole world, which contains a great multitude of human beings possessing, as we believe, immortal souls. In the enumera- tion of these vast multitudes we find numerous shades of difference in moral excellence — some have high ideals ; most have low ideals ; some few have seemed to grasp the fact that the de- velopment of soul life was the most important LOVE. thing which could engage the attention of humanity ; many have merely a superficial apprehension of this fact, and most have scarcely a casual comprehension that the scope of existence reaches beyond the achievements of this mortal life. As a consequence, we are compelled to con- clude that at this stage of the world's history the spiritual progress of the race is disappoint- ing. Even in Christendom, which is supposed to be guided religiously by the tenets of the Sermon on the Mount, we are compelled to recognize that selfishness is prevalent, material- ism dominant, self-sacrifice the exception, and a warm appreciation of spiritual things rare. Nevertheless, it is not easy, if indeed possible, to despair of the ultimate destiny of the race. A vast volume of intelligence has been already generated. The world fortunately has many men and women of learning, of piety and of elevation of sentiment. The conditions under which mortals live in this world have a tend- ency to drag downwards. We find ourselves INTRODUCTION. in a world in which the major part of man- kind is engaged in a mad struggle for worldly achievement, and we are insensibly caught in the toils and dragged along with the mul- titude. Humanity is but another name for frailty — temptations everywhere beset. The overpowering desire for worldly achievements breeds selfishness ; the lusts and appetites of the flesh give birth to evil desires and sinful deeds. And so we are compelled, in looking about us, to conclude, beyond reasonable ques- tion, that humanity at present is very far from having reached its spiritual ideal. Against the forces which work for selfish- ness, for sin and for moral degradation, one agency, alone and single-handed, is fighting for the regeneration and uplifting of mankind. That agency is Love. Whatever that is high and noble has been achieved during the few thousand years that humanity has been work- ing out its destiny on this earth, is the fruit of love working in the human heart. We may give it other names, we may call it "re- LOVE. ligion," "altruism," "Christian consciousness," but the essence which is behind all this is Love, and indeed those of us who, with patience and sincerity, have faith in the ulti- mate triumph of virtue and goodness, who believe that sin will sometime be overcome and that godliness and spiritual excellence will hold undisputed sway, rest all our hope upon the fact that Love exists, that Love works, and that Love has within itself the power to overcome all adverse influences. In dealing with Love the larger share of attention will be devoted to the common use of the word, namely, Love in its relation to the sexes; but it would be an injustice to the subject to regard this as the sole use of the word, and, on the other hand, it would be a minimizing of sexual love itself to fail to point out that in its true character this is not essentially different from Love in its highest relations. Love between man and woman is the most usual manifestation of the word, but INTRODUCTION. 5 true love between man and woman does not differ in any essential particular from that conception of love which constitutes religion itself. Love may be defined as that undying emo- tion planted within the human heart which prompts the soul to look away from merely worldly aims to a destiny which stretches into eternity. Love is the link which binds this mortal to the immortal life. Love is the ladder by which men can ascend from earth to heaven. Love is religion because it unites mortal man to immortal God. If this life were all, and if death ended all, then indeed Love's mission would fail. With all its struggling for purely worldly aims which seem to absorb the prepondering interest of humanity, there yet exists an almost universal belief in the immortality of the soul, in a future state, and a conviction that the con- duct of this life bears a supreme relationship to the life hereafter. Most men believe in an omnipotent controlling power in the uni- LOVE. verse which holds human destiny in the hollow of its hands and disposes of souls according to its inexorable will. Notwithstanding the intellectual apprecia- tion of these transcendent and momentous facts of human destiny, most men still pass through life with but a vague and dim appre- ciation of the overshadowing importance of their spiritual destiny. The tendency is to cling to earth and to become absorbed in the petty aims and achievements which con- cern this world only. Selfishness is the root of this tendency to grovelling aims. Love poured into the human heart lifts a being out of the slough of worldliness and opens up the true value of spiritual things. Love is the influence which draws men at all times from an engrossing regard for the world to- ward an absorbing interest in that part of us which is immortal. Love drives out self and selfish aims, and lifts the soul into considera- tion of others' interests. Love lures one from base and grovelling aims to high and im- INTRODUCTION. mortal purposes. Love marks the distinction between the self-satisfied, self-absorbed wor- shipper of the world and its possessions, and a self-forgetting, meek, earnest seeker after things which relate to eternal life. Love and spiritual life are indissolubly associated. It is Love which prompts humanity to look be- yond the temporary advantages of the present moment to the sublime achievements of an immortal existence. If, in '-ed, this life were all, and immortality and .uture state were a myth, it is indeed possible that tlie principle of Love, applied even to the limited scope of human existence and having reference solely to the relation of men with each other during the compass of this mortal life, would still exert a beautiful and far-reaching influence towards making this life brighter, higher and happier. The principle of self-abnegation is so manifestly potent as a means of happiness that it would come to be learned and appreciated, even among men who knew that the span of their 8 LOVE. lives was to be measured by three score years and ten, that it was the true policy and the sound maxim of living. Pure selfishness could never produce either a happy or an elevated type of being on this earth. If we poor mor- tals who, without our own volition, are called upon to face the responsibility of living, were denied the privilege of looking forward to another sphere of existence hereafter, it would still be worth our while to try to extract the highest and best from the conditions which surround us here, and thus, from the principle of worldly wisdom, if from no higher motive, an enlightened world would ultimately come to recognize the value of Love. But the scope and meaning of this word would be enormously circumscribed and its potency be immeasurably diminished if its sphere were limited to merely lifting up and brightening the pathway of those who are treading an inexorable road to annihila- tion and oblivion. To give Love its full scope, it must be regarded as an emanation \ INTRODUCTION. from the divine omnipotence poured into the hearts of mortals struggling through their span of existence toward another life in which the soul, free from the grovelling tendencies of the flesh and the world, could pursue an end- less destiny in an eternal sphere. Indeed, Love working in the human heart constitutes the greatest token of immortality which human reason is capable of applying. It is when Love has got possession of the heart that impulses are awakened which make it seem treason to nature to affirm that this life would end all. Love in the full exercise of its power bursts the bounds of human thought and human endeavor, and creates ideals which could only find fruition in another, a larger and a higher sphere. You can talk to the world-besotted man that this life ends all, but a man whose soul is fired by Love can never be made to be- lieve that human destiny is circumscribed to the limited and uncertain span of human life. CHAPTER II. MANIFESTATIONS. Though Love in its essence is the same thing under all conditions, yet its manifesta- tions in human life are varied. Most persons associate this word exclusively with certain tender relations between men and women ; in fact this is about the only clear, popular idea existing in respect to the word. If the query is pressed a little further : What do you mean by saying that your friend loves? the superficial answer would come back at once, " O, he is very fond of her," or " he is fascinated by her"; but what soul quality is involved, what profound meaning is em- braced in this idea, few entertain any con- ception. It is not indeed important that one should know the metaphysical or even the spiritual meaning of Love, provided there be no doubt about his possession of the quality itself, but it is of moment to mankind that lO MANIFESTATIONS. II all men should know and understand this, the greatest of all things which can mould and color human destiny. How does love manifest itself? Once more let us revert to definition. Love is the qual- ity which takes a being prone to selfishness and self-seeking, and lifts him out of concern for self into an atmosphere of self-forgetful- ness and regard for others. Love is a hal- lowed, all-pervading influence which, when in possession of the human heart, lifts it above itself and the things which ordinarily occupy its chief attention. It drives out meanness, littleness, envy, hatred and malice. It sub- stitutes a warm, generous devotion to things which reach beyond the promotion of the interest of the lover. To illustrate — the mother loves her babe. Toward this helpless infant there goes out from her heart a pure and holy devotion which lifts her soul up, in the act and impulse, above the normal condition of her life. The mother may be naturally a selfish woman ; / 12 LOVE. ; when she loves her child she is not selfish. A normal mother would tear the clothing from her own shivering shoulders to preserve warmth in the body of her infant. When in this act she is a lover, and has around her the glory and heroism which pertains to love. The quality of love may be seen in this act. Ordinarily, as between other human beings, she would feel no obligation resting upon her to strip the clothes from her own back to cover that of a person in whom she had no interest, and for whom she had no regard. On the contrary, in the struggle for existence, the natural instinct of self-defence would impel each individual in danger to struggle for himself and his own existence. Half a dozen persons are in danger of drowning — there is one life-preserver. Under ordinary conditions the struggle will be to obtain it, and the one who has obtained it will cling to it. The lover hands over the life-preserver to the loved one without hesi- MANIFESTATIONS. IS tation, without thought and without question. It is the great, overshadowing, heavenly im- pulse which not only prompts to the sacri- fice but gilds it with unmixed delight. The mother sacrifices her comfort, perhaps even her life, to save the life of her helpless child ; she does it as a lover and under the influ- ence of love. This is one manifestation. But there are others. The country is endangered ; a foreign foe threatens to desecrate its soil ; homes may be invaded, liberty endangered. Under these circumstances lovers appear. The natural in- clination of men is to preserve their lives, to avoid danger, to keep away from the deadly rain of bullets ; but the patriot, in whose breast burns the love of country, love of home, love of liberty, love of national integ- rity, forgets entirely all these selfish instincts, and with joy and avidity seizes his musket and flies to the defence of his country, and counts it even glory and sweetness if he may die in such a cause. The man who, in the 14 LOVE. hour of his country's peril, animated by the spirit of patriotic fervor, rushes to his coun- try's defence and lays down his life, is a lover, and in the act is manifesting and displaying the very essence of the quality of love, and which makes love in this as in all other things pertaining to human action, the greatest thing in the world. Religion is the most transcendent thing pertaining to human life. To be permitted to worship God according to the form which answers to one's conscience ; to be able to proclaim to others the mighty doctrines of religious truth which we believe to be essen- tial to the salvation of human souls ; to make sure that God's truth shall not be trampled under foot, and his law and majesty not be scorned and despised in the world, these are things which take a deep hold on human beings. A man's religion reaches deeper than anything else which pertains to him, because, while we can afford by means of philosophy and fortitude to endure any loss which this MANIFESTATIONS. «s world may inflict, while we can struggle and accept the loss of property, separation from friends, and even the frowns and jeers of the world, no man can view lightly any- thing which he thinks is to afiect his des- tiny hereafter in the great unknown and immortal future. Hence, when an attempt is made to interfere with a man's religious liberty, to violate his conscience and to deny him the right to proclaim to the world religious truth as he believes it, two paths are open to him. By renouncing his religious convictions he can continue to live, to eat, to drink, to flourish and to enjoy worldly possessions if he have them. But the lover prefers to suffer persecution and death. The man who, to maintain the rights of his own conscience, to preserve throughout the world the transcendent right to propagate God's truth in the world, gives up his goods and, if need be, his life ; goes smiling to the stake with the sanction of his conscience and with the glorious thought that he is l6 LOVE. lighting a fire which will hereafter assist in blazoning the truth. That man is a lover — it is but another manifestation of love. Will any person designate these things as marking what is called heroism ? Be it so. But the heroic in this life is almost invari- ably an emanation of love. Viewed in the aggregate, human life is not heroic. With all the pathetic and dramatic phases of hu- m:n sensibility, with the hourly tragedies that mark the inner workings of human lives, even the dullest of them, with the constant sense of bitterness, injustice, baffled hope, wounded pride, with all the yearnings, the unfulfilled dreams, the unsatisfied long- ings — even with these things, the aggregate of human life is unheroic. Viewed from a higher standpoint, the inhabitants of this planet present an aspect of so many mil- lions of beings forever struggling, surging, grasping — each one trying to clutch and make his own the largest possible area of the world's surface — men whose days are MANIFESTATIONS. 17 Spent in the accumulation of money, men whose lives are devoted to the grasping of power, and men who are nursing petty jeal- ousies, mean aims and sordid desires. In the midst of this selfish, self-seeking world the element of the heroic has always survived. Among the aggregate of selfish men, nobility of character has always existed. Among those whose aims are low have been found men capable of heroic things. Even in the man whose aims are grovelling and selfish is a spark of that which is capable of noble things ever lurking — it is the spirit of goodness, the spirit of God working insensibly from day to day and from age to age in the hearts of men, struggling to lead them upward to higher life and nobler and holier purposes, and it manifests itself in what we call the heroic. The thing which prompts to all this is Love. Take distinct examples of the heroic. The man who sees his fellow-man drowning, and without hesitation plunges in the water to i8 LOVE. save him at the peril of his own life is a hero. He is also a lover, unless, indeed, there was mixed with his heroism an element of selfishness. If it was to obtain the approba- tion of the world and to be proclaimed a hero among his fellow-men which prompted the act, then he was neither a hero nor a lover. Heroism consists not in the deed but in the doing. In the deep underground working of a coal mine one of the miners discovered that an explosion would presently take place ; he had it in his power immediately to escape from the mine. Pure self would have suggested this course, but there was something higher within him. He thought of the hundreds of fellow beings whose lives were sweet to them, and all important to their wives and children. He not only risked his life by warning them, but, fore- seeing that some might mistake the way of escape he stood where he could point the way to each one so that no error could be made. The last man had safely passed the danger ' MANIFESTATIONS. 19 point, but the man who had stayed to point the way was caught in the explosion and died. He was a hero, greater, probably, than the man who rules kingdoms and moulds the advance of empires. Hence is heroism love. Love manifests itself in the world in a thou- sand forms known and unknown. Humanity is getting deeply interested in the history of the race. Modern civilization has created wonder- ful and almost unlimited means of discovering and making known all the notable events and most of the unnotable events which are occur- ring from day to day, and from hour to hour. We have newspapers from the north to the south pole ; the minutest incident which passes beyond the common place is chronicled by a thousand agencies in this particular age ; but even our wonderful system of printing and publishing does not reach but a fraction of the real heroism which pertains to human life, nor chronicle a tithe of the crime which soils the human race. The greatest moral victories are won within the silent and voiceless recesses of 20 LOVE. the human heart ; the greatest crimes are those which lurk in the mah'gnant and diabolical instincts of the cowardly villain who never dares the overt act. And so the struggle goes on from day to day through the whole chapter of human history. Self and the natural prompt- ings of a depraved nature leading the soul downward, and the one great silent force opposed to the subtle impulses of evil is Love — Love, which, from hour to hour, is exerting its mysterious and potent influence to awaken all that is highest, purest and most heroic in human life and action. CHAPTER III. LOVE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN. To the ordinary person Love is regarded as a manifestation of sentiment between men and women, and that is the sense in which it is mostly thought of and mostly applied in this world, and this, perhaps, is its most interesting phase, and it is in this sense that it exercises the greatest influence upon human destiny. Love is essentially the same in all its aspects and manifestations. The essence, as has been repeated, is the same—the mother's love, the patriot's love, the martyr's love, the hero's love are all equally divine and, in definition, the same as the love between men and women. But this latter has in it certain elements and phases which make it more subtle in its power, more potent in its influence and more exquisite in its character. 21 22 LOVE. s It is difficult indeed to speak in an accu- rate and philosophical way of this magic word, Love — most difficult of all to apprehend its various shades in relation to love between the sexes. This much we do know, that it is the greatest individual force in human life and character. A world composed exclusively of men — what would it become? A world com- posed entirely of women — who can conceive the end of that ? It is the plainest and simplest problem of life that men and women are essen- tial to each other, essential to the existence of the race, and essential to all human develop- ment. Thus we have seen, in noting the history of the world, that, from the earliest days of the race to this present moment, men and women have been drawn to each other by the subtle power of love, and, in the exercise of that feeling which springs up between persons of opposite sexes, pretty nearly everything that is beautiful, stimulating and elevating in life is attained. This world, it cannot be too often repeated, I! LOVE liETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN. 23 is still essentially materialistic. One would be disposed to lose faith in religion and doubt the applicability of the sublime tenets of the Sermon on the Mount to the world, when we stay to con- sider the apparently small progress made in the world in the direction of spiritual life. But, with all the tendency to be engrossed in human aims and human ambitions, with the proneness to grovelling with mere earthly concerns, the world has presented its instinctive regard for the sen- timental, and this owes its origin and depends for its existence upon the influence of love. Everywhere throughout this wide world is the old, old story being told, and the old, old drama of love between men and women being enacted. Not a clock gives its tick but that somewhere hearts are beating quicker from the influence of love. If one had an omniscient eye and could wander all over the world and look into the hearts of the teeming millions who cluster to- gether in cities and towns, in villages and in hamlets, in scattered rural districts, it would be found that everywhere men were breathing 24 LOVE. into the ears of women a sweet story of love, and that women's hearts were beating faster as with heaving breast and drooping eye they listen with rapture to the sweet words. The enactment of this love drama is not con- fined to any class ; it is not the prerogative of the rich or of the learned, of the wise or of the great ; it pertains to no race, no country, no clime. The poor, the ignorant, the uncivilized, all feel the impulses of love and all manage by words or signs, which are as effective as words, to convey the meaning by a sweet reciprocity of feeling. Consider what a power this love making is in keeping alive whatever there is of sentiment and divinity in a world naturally materialistic. In the lives of the most sordid and grovelling the influence of love, be it in its grosser and less refined form, exercises its transforming power. The moment a man or a woman is in love, that moment a spark of the divine has entered the human soul. The eternal worship of self has given way, for LOVE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN. 2$ the moment, at least, to a spirit stronger than self. The soul has been lifted for the time into a higher altitude of being. The spirit of self- sacrifice has been generated — the germs of hero- ism have been sown. Scarcely a man has been born in this world, and reached the age of twenty, who has not looked upon some woman with a passing emotion. Scarcely a girl has reached that age who has not formed ideals, and seen their hues reflected in some mortal man. Exceptions may be found, but they are not normal. The passing fancy may never have been uttered in words ; it may have been hidden shrinkingly deep- locked within the breast, but it has had its birth, and it has had its influence. The man who has never felt a tender emotion towards a woman has never lived, that is, has never known the full fruition of life. The woman into whose heart has never entered the immortal impulses of love, has never known the great mysteries of human life. The soul that has never loved is dead — it has no part or parcel in the kingdom of heaven. 26 LOVE. Love not only keeps alive whatever there is of sentiment in the world, but it creates the condi- tions upon which organized society rests. This tendency to love some one of the other sex finds its fruition in an impulse to union ; from the state point of view, a life union — from the religious point of view, an immortal union. From both points of view it finds its end in marriage, and marriage is the foundation of home, and home is the foundation of organized social existence. Marriage opens up great problems. The orthodox belief of enlightened communities is that monogamy is the only true basis upon which social life can rest. Be the look super- ficial, or be the investigation profound, it is quite manifest that upon the basis of a perpetual and exclusive union between man and woman the only sound fabric of social organization can be found. If this theory be correct, then the day a man and woman stand together at the altar to give formal assent to the contract which makes them united till death parts them, they bid LOVE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN. 27 adieu to the love of all other persons whomso- ever, and by the nature of the sacred obligations they have assumed, they are to cling to each other, and put aside all thoughts, feelings, or impulses of regard for any other. This is the basis which now rules modern society, and upon which our laws are founded. It is sound in theory, but cannot be enforced in practice. With all that is said in glorifying the home as the greatest individual factor in securing high national impulses, and this is especially applicable to the English race, whose home life is nearer approaching the perfection of human organization than any other, it nevertheless is a fact that marriage is no certain guarantee of love between husband and wife. In other chapters it will be necessary to deal more in detail with the myriad phases which pertain to human love-making and human mar- riages. It is enough at this present moment to say that all persons who are joined together in marriage are not joined together by the cement- ing power of love ; on the contrary, it is open to <• 28 LOVE. grave doubt if one-half of the marriages are in reality a union of hearts by the all-pervading power of love, and, therefore, tremendous problems are opened as to what shall follow. It has been said that the soul that loveth not is dead, that the full fruition of manhood or womanhood has not been reached until breathed upon, inspired and gilded by the lofty and divine impulses which spring from the birth of pure and holy love. If, then, it so happen that a man and woman find themselves united by a contract recognized as indissoluble by law (except for one or two causes not often applic- able) and yet become palpably certain that this union is not hallowed by love, what follows as the moral consequence? Are both to pass through the remainder of life untouched by that influence which alone can lead to the divine? Is the whole yearning of the human soul to be stifled forever because of this ill-fated contract? Is there, in a word, to be no dissolution, no avenue of escape ? Who will finally settle the problem? Who dares to categorically answer n N LOVE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN. 29 the question ? Some will say, yes, and point, perhaps, to the statute book, perhaps to the Bible, in support of their theory ; others will answer, no, and point to the passionate aspira- tions of the immortal soul. Which is the highest authority? If the problem could be settled upon the basis of human experience or political expediency it might be easily deter- mined. The balance of advantages in the peace, order, and good government of the state could be determined, and the matter disposed of on those lines. But, in working out the prob- lems of human destiny, we are forced to go beyond the statute book. We can approximate to a solution of human laws, but we are help- less in the presence of the divine. Here, then, we have the problem, that men and women together constitute the human race, and be- tween men and women there is an eternal tendency to mutual attraction ; that between men and women har» always existed and ever will exist — the passion of love. And that this exercises the widest influence of anything 30 LOVE. in the whole world upon human destiny. Religion need not be excepted, because Love is religion and religion is Love. But we have to recognize as one of the simple and palpable things of life that in all this varied love-making and marrying that is going forward in the world, there are shades and differ- ences which mark wonderful distinctions in the process. We have true love and false love. We have love which comes from heaven and love which springs from the lowest and basest of human passions — we have love that ennobles and love that debases — we have love that is pure and unselfish, and we have the spurious imitation of it which begins in self and ends in self-gratification. It will be necessary to deal with some of these phases in detail. CHAPTER IV. TRUE LOVE AND FALSE LOVE. ■ There is something so sweet, so ecstatic and so thrilling in the love lore of the race that it seems almost sacrilege to attempt to apply keen analysis and cold philosophy to the sub- ject. All of us recall the first moments in the budding days of youth when, as with the awakening influence of spring, there stole over the heart the thrilling joy of love's first birth. The sky seemed brighter and bluer ; this poor earth was lighted up with the myriad-hued reflections of the kaleidoscope ; peace was on the earth and sweetness in the air. We recall in visions the supreme moment when, embold- ened by signs and tokens that could not be mistaken, in some quiet dell we ventured to take the hand and look into the eye of the adored one, and after many shrinkings, owing to the momentous interests involved, we ven- tured to breathe the word which broke down 31 32 LOVE. the little barrier of palpable hypocrisy which had been maintained, and then, hand in hand, passed beyond the veil into the holy of holies. Perhaps we still feel the pang as we recall how, after the moment of ecstasy had come, death robbed us of our joy, and all the bright hopes which were to gild our lives were extin- guished. Surely these things are not to be reduced to crucial investigation. No one is going to venture to analyze feelings and impulses as sacred as those which have been awakened by the magic of love's immortal fingers. But there is another side. What is first love ? Is first love the genuine article? Can a man love more than once ? Is true love between a man and woman immortal ? Is love, love for- ever more, as between the two parties involved ? These are questions which in the interest of truth, knowledge and understanding, need to be enquired into. First love. At the age of, say, sixteen the beardless youth, not yet released from the TRUE LOVE AND FALSE LOVE. 33 school-room, becomes desperately enamored of a golden-haired girl of, say, fifteen ; the tender passion is reciprocated ; eyes meet, sweet words are said ; ideals are formed ; vows are recorded ; hopes big with destiny begin to take shape. In the experience of the race, what becomes of this ? In nine cases out of ten the parties drift into separation with new interests following — a quiet, gradual diminution of interest until zeal IS succeeded by indifference and indifference by oblivion. At this stage of love, which proves to be so evanescent, and so rarely results in a permanent interest, was there, as a matter of fact, any real love at all ? If not, what was the counterfeit ? In the case of school girls, imagination ever plays a conspicuous part, and whatever is want- ing in the imagination is supplied by novels, wherein are found heroes and heroines who play a part disproportionately great in the eyes of young and inexperienced persons. The imaginative and susceptible girl conceives vast admiration for some hero in the story ; her eyes 3 I 34 LOVE. I! roam over her little world to find this hero among the circle of those she knows. The first youth that bestows admiration she forthwith begins to clothe with the colors of her hero, and in imagination, forgetting his actual qualities, with all the persistency of the idealist, she insists that he is and must be the hero. As time goes by, and the reality is spread out before her, day by day, presently it is borne in upon her, pro- bably to her great distress, that the individual out of whom she has made her hero has feet of clay. The dream vanishes ; the bubble has burst ; the drama is ended. Such is first love. It may be sweet. The poet has said, " There's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream." But who dares to predicate a life union springing out of the first effervescent ebullitions of the school-boy and school-girl age? How many, in reviewing life, can recall some romance in which for a time a feeling of most intense regard prevailed toward another of the other sex, vhich romance lived its little day, died out, and was succeeded by TRUE LOVE AND FALSE LOVE. 35 another. Nor is it probable, in most cases, that the second was life-long in its character or immortal in its influence. All the signs and tokens which indicate love between the sexes are present in this romance. A thrilling interest is generated ; love tokens pass ; sweet words are said, and the air is laden with the omnipresence of the loved one. And yet, within the short compass of even this mortal life, these sensations die out ; perhaps dislike follows, and new interests drive out the memory of the former passion. Even when destiny comes and marriage fol- lows, where exists the human wisdom to say that this particular love, which has led two beings to the sacred marriage altar, differs in its essential quality from that which has been pre- viously awakened, and which has expired in the ordinary jostle of the world ? In a word, what is true love, and what is the counterfeit ? That true love does exist in the world none of us but the basest would dream of denying. We have already attempted to form something like r 36 LOVE. a definition of what it is ; that it is a holy impulse that drives out self and raises its possessor to a higher plane of thought and action is the recognized token of its presence and power. That it has dominated human hearts in this finite world is true as all romance bears testimony, as all poetry proclaims. That the iri^.ui:'"'<:c of sweet sentiment between persons of diffeiei.L :cxef> has a far reaching effect upon human destiny h a truism, but when we under- take to uisv^ r,mvid (.'" as between what constitutes true love and what C(.nstitutes that phase of sentiment which is in perpetual operation, and yet which gives no token of immortality, that is a question which may well baffle philosophers and exhaust human wisdom. The world is now and then thrilled to the core by the story of a devotion which defies time and all its changes. Human interests are flung aside, prospects of worldly preferment are ignored, the humdrum of life is contemned, and everything that is worldly is shut out while the soul of the lover revels in the unfading dream of changeless devotion. 1 TRUE LOVE AND FALSE LOVE. 37 d [e ^ This is really what the world is yearning for ; it is an ideal which lives in all worthy hearts ; it is akin to the power of religion which goes deepest of all in its effects upon the immortal ego. But this is not the general type of love- making which goes on in this world. Under the conditions of human society as commonly understood, love culminates in mar- riage, or, in other words, the marriage rite is sanctified by the presence of love. Is this so? This question must be looked at in the abstract. Individual instances there are in which the two happy mortals kneeling before the altar fulfill the poetical fable of two hearts that beat as one ; but a keen insight into the particular feelings and emotions which have led successive couples to the altar would re- veal — would it not? — that varied motives had prompted this important step. The world and worldly motives so far tinge all human acts that it is an extraordinary thing to find them completely eliminated. Many marriages are contracted for family reasons ; i! ! I: :i 38 LOVE. impecunious men, anxious for lives of ease and indulgence, have deliberately sought in marriage the hand of a woman who could bring money for the mere gratification of human pleasure. Women have accepted with avidity offers of marriage which promise them luxurious homes and the means of self-gratification. It may be that in these cases sentiment was not altogether wanting ; indeed, in many instances of this kind the courtship period may have had its delightful phases, but the love, so-called, that was gener- ated under these conditions was a love founded upon intense personal interest, and there is no token of immortal love in that. Love forgets self, and is tinged and beautified by the flavor of religion which places self last and looks only to the well-being and happiness of another. Then again we must have regard to the aver- age cases in which people do go to the altar with a considerable atmosphere of sentiment surrounding them. There is something intensely interesting in the relation between man and woman. Nearly every man feels his vanity TRUE LOVE AND FALSE LOVE. 39 touched at its tenderest point when he has succeeded in assuring himself that he commands the exclusive interest of a woman worthy of him. Nearly every girl dreams from the first budding moment of maturity of a home, of a lover, some one who will cherish and protect her. When, therefore, in some quiet country hamlet two people are thrown together and begin to generate interest in one another by the mere fact of proximity, which is sure to create interest or dislike, and the moment comes when the word of love is breathed and there is necessarily born in both hearts a strong impulse of romance — henceforth they are lovers ; they are to pass together, soon, through that momen- tous ceremony of eternal union ; their lives are to be blended in common interest, and, side by side, they are to face the world together and enjoy a common destiny. How natural, how inevitable that this should beget sentimentalism and awaken whatever capacities for romance exist within them. To the marriage altar they go and then to a * \l AO LOVE. common home. There they live together, bound by a tie at once sweet, sacred and indissoluble. Does all this necessarily involve love? Does this chapter of accidents tinged, as it must be, by the romantic character of the act itself, imply on the part of either of them that the essence of immortal love has planted itself in their breasts, to live and glow and color all the rest of their lives in this world, and, finally, lead them into the kingdom of heaven ? T/iat is the question. Has a divine something been born within them which can triumph over all change, all suffering, and worse than all, the dull daily routine which life imposes upon them ? That is the question. To be plain, does marriage in the abstract, as going on from day to day in modern society, mean in all cases, or in the majority of cases, a union of hearts and a devotion that overcomes all the incidents of fortune, or, is there about it a mere drifting of people in the wake of custom to conditions which are usual and in accordance with the general lines of social existence ? Some modern philosopher has started the TRUE LOVE AND FALSE LOVE. 41 question — Is marriage a failure ? It had suflR- cient interest to the world at large to be widely discussed. Why propound such a question ? Do we not all glorify the home — the family, of which marriage is the foundation ? Happy homes we have, and pure homes, but are all homes happy ? Is the record of a majority of married lives a record of perennial love? Do we find at some period, longer or shorter, after the scene at the altar, tokens of selfishness, ill- temper, nagging, unkindness? What has be- come of Love ? Was there love at the altar and before ? Where has it fled ? Is Love immortal, or, as Tennyson puts it, " Love is love forever more." To be frank, the most striking instances of conjugal unhappiness exist in the cases in which the demonstrations of love were most intense at and before the altar. Why should it become common pleasantry that lovers are sweetly happy and devoted be- fore marriage and serenely indifferent after ? The relations between husband and wife are altogether calculated to generate unity of 42 LOVE. interest, and to bind them together. The success of the husband in the world means a corresponding elevation of the wife. His failure means her degradation so far as the world goes. A natural pride in the breasts of all right-think- ing men makes them desire to succeed in the world, not alone for what advantages success would bring to themselves but to their families as well. Viewed in relation to the world at large, they stand side by side to fight a common battle for the world's esteem and a common battle for immortal happiness. They have imposed upon them the care of children whom they instinctively love and who constitute a common bond. The injury, misfortune or afflic- tion of one member of this family brings to its support the sympathy of all. They have an ever present sen, e that the tie which they have formed is one which cannot be broken, and there is imposed upon them, therefore, the inevitable necessity of making the best of the situation, whatever it may be. If, then, at the moment of sealing this momentous contract there exists TRUE LOVE AND FALSE LOVE. 43 love, there is everything in their future rela- tions to cement, develop and perpetuate this sentiment. What, then, is the reason that married lives are unhappy, that interest flags, that they yawn in each other's society, that they form social relations outside of the family circle, that the sweet and blissful moments, which shed such a glow upon life in the ante-matrimonial days, cease ? They jog along together, shielding each other against common enemies, but they are lovers no more. Where is love } If any one had appeared to proclaim, as they were about to proceed to the altar, that tiicy did not love each other, he would have been spurned as a prophet of evil, a cold and obdurate cynic. A few years after the altar scene, each, perchance, has pathet- ically asked the question, in the recesses of his or her own heart, " Do I love .'' " Instances there are in which this sacred ecstasy of love has gone on beautifying and idealizing all through life, following from one condition to another, expanding itself, and ■. I '.t-J' 44 LOVE. adjusting itself to the ever-changing circum- stances — intense in the earlier stages, warm as life progresses into ripened manhood or woman- hood, and developing into serene beatitude, as, hand in hand, they enter into the ripening stages of old age. These prove the existence and power of love. But these instances are not the rule, are they ? Nay, in shrinking pathos, shall we say, they are the exception. In these conflicting conditions of married life how is finite wisdom to discriminate between true and false love, or, rather, to determine wher*^ love exists, and where it exists not ? One thing is clear — love-making does not imply love ; momentary ecstasy between persons of different sexes does not conclusively imply love ; fulsome words, gushing avowals, do not constitute unquestionable tokens of the presence of the mighty and unconquerable power of love in the human heart. Oh, that poor mortals could but once get a realizing sense of what love really is, and a true conception of its mighty mission ! Love is a 1 ;, TRUE LOVE AND FALSE LOVE. 45 new birth. The dialogue that Nicodemus held by night has its true interpretation in that one word — Love. It means that whereas we, follow- ing the natural bent of the human heart, have been grovelling with the world, and struggling and striving for self and self-advancement, there comes a sublime moment when we see the true secret of life — it is in self-forgetfulness, self- crucifixion, self-abnegation, in the realizing sense that to make the soul really great self must be ignored as a motive of human action, and a warm, all-pervading, and uplifting sense that the welfare, the happiness, and the elevation of others is the true business of all — the highest manhood. Love works the miracle, and the soul that loveth shall never die. CHAPTER V. I I MATRIMONIAL MISTAKES. It is little wonder that marriage, if not an ab- solute failure, should, in many instances, not be a complete success. The circumstances under which this most sacred and far-reaching of all human institutions is entered upon, are almost certain to eventuate in disappointment and failure. And it happens that the conditions of social life are such as to necessitate a continu- ation of these unfortunate incidents. For example, while love is the foundation of marriage, it is pretty evident that all that savors of fancy and romance is not love, and the very best human experience is necessary for the determination of the existence of love itself. What is called love or imagined to be love, in most cases, as between so-called lovers, is but an outgrowth of mutual vanity. A young girl under the influence of imagination 46 MATRIMONIAL MISTAKES. 47 1 conceives a wild infatuation for some man whose real qualities she entirely misconceives, and who stands for her enveloped with the ideal qualities with which she has clothed him. A young man, on the other hand, is flattered to the degree of intoxication by the first delightful sensation that his image has become an object of worship in a woman's heart. Neither of them has had any real experience with the awful mysteries of life, both of them are utterly ignorant of soul problems. What young man stops to enquire in detail into the essentials of permanent esteem and regard ? Many persons fall in love from physical qualities. A girl is very pretty, has sunny eyes, ruby lips, golden hair, and a dainty foot. This skin-deep beauty of women from the beginning of the world has evoked instinc- tive fascination on the part of men. The girl is pretty, and, therefore, sought after, and becomes a general object of interest in her circle of young men acquaintances. One of them is more fortunate than the rest in securing her favor ; he is flattered by this fact, and com- 48 LOVE. ^ I pletely fascinated by her sweet glances. The re- sult is love-making, then marriage, and when the stern realities of life come to be faced amidst the thousand perpetual duties and associations linked with a common home and a common destiny, he some day wakes up to a realiza- tion of the fact that more is required of a woman than the possession of bright eyes and ruby lips, A young man has a handsome face and a distinguished bearing ; he has certain masterful, manly qualities, and is capable of little chivalries which are so intensely interesting to susceptible girls. She is captivated with his face, admires his manhood and is enthralled by his courtesy; result — love, so-called, then marriage, then an awakening and a realization that the great 1 ! I It! 64 LOVE. the antidote — what is the cure? What power can prevent the crime? What means can be devised to guard against the awful position? This new love which has, unfortunately, perhaps, been born, has possibly opened up new and love- lier visions of life; it has driven out self; banished sordid aims and given birth to beautiful, rich and unselfish aspirations ; it has transformed the soul from a torpid indifference to life's great purposes into an elevating, pervading, palpitating impulse heavenward. Is it unlawful? Is any love un- lawful ? When does Love, heaven's own divine messenger to regenerate and lift up human hearts, become a thing of evil — a thing that must be shunned and put aside as dangerous and wicked ? Again, reverting to the case of the two per- sons between whom is no earthly impediment — they love and enter the holy of holies, mayhap without the uplifted hand of mother church. Politically, this is an offence with severe social penalties. But who is ready with the inexor- able religious proof that heaven's law has been ignored in this fruition of love ? Bear in mind er je I? s, d d il s e WHAT LOVE IS LAWFUL? gj i ^»'g tne sacredness of the inofv .- marriaire • no nn^ • institution of with ir^morfl tV u ""^ "°'"'' '° ''^a' tremendous finalities. *^ A woman loves in the highest an^ sense of the word Th. P"'^"' shows condusivl tha 17""" °' "= """^ ^^'etoman.iaro r:::r^>'--"- experience we have to recognfze H^T " fr-'-'ty. A woman's love ;' I "'"''""' °' sacred thine I „ • ^ ''^''"«''"' ^nd woman 3 S l,:: '^ " ~''^' ""^ °^ a -i«ce ror the'ZedTel 17"?-' "^ but hallowed Snm .• ^ °"^^ ^^^^t and laws somet r" ''^' ^^^^ '^^^^^^ -^es ' ' sometimes love is betrayed 4;rie::s;^°''"'°^^'--''''----"awrui g. leads to m,sery, shame, disgrace. From il t 66 LOVE. the world's standpoint it is a breach of human law, said to be based on the divine. But no- where is the divine law written in such plain and inexorable characters as in the eternal laws of nature. Therefore, while the result of this breach of social law brings misery, shame, disgrace, from the world's point of view, who dares to say, viewing it from the standpoint of immortal impulses, that it is unlawful ? It is unlawful if it be the result of a base and sensual impulse ; it is unlawful if it is born of self and self-gratification. But if it is born of the true, the divine, and the eternal impulse, who shall cast the first stone ? Let us institute a comparison. Another woman has passed from stage to stPige of her life's drama without a single breach of human law or social canon ; she has pursued a career of absolute spotlessness, but into her heart has never entered the divine afflatus which can spring from love alone ; she has never known what it is to forget self ; the ennobling spirit of sacrifice has never penetrated her soul — withered, dust- WHAT LOVE IS LAWFUL? 67 covered, fruitless. Who is to judge between these two ? and who is to determine whose soul is nearest the kingdom of heaven ? It is a grave thing for any man or body of men to undertake to pass judgment upon the mysterious throbbings of the human heart. It is a serious thing for any sect or organization, no matter whence it derives its professed authority, to pronounce love, in any of its phases, unlawful. If the world has made unsatisfactory progress towards the higher life, if the things of the world still claim a monopoly of human attention to the exclusion of things spiritual, it is because that spiritual things have, in the whole history of the world, been too far propagated upon human lines, and in relation to human interests. The purely spiritual will never get infused into human life and character as long as any penalties are imposed upon the free and pure exercise of love. One thing, and one thing only, will regen- erate the world — permeation of human hearts with love. Religion disassociated from love is ^^ ; ".: 1 - '1 6S LOVE. not religion at all : the essence of religion is love. The supreme and overshadowing need of the world in all ages is more love — love in all its phases. Anything which will lift poor humanity out of itself, lead it away from human aims and human ambitions into a bright and beautiful realization of higher, and greater, and immortal things — this only is the influence which can secure the regeneration of the world. God forbid that it should be intimated for a moment that all the grovelling passions which prevail among people of different sexes should pass for love, or be permitted to wear loveV livery. Love instinctively drives out impurity and lifts the soul to higher and more beautiful conceptions of life and duty. Nothing can be impure that is sanctified by the presence and all-pervading power of true heaven-born love. Unlawful passion there is — unlawful love there is not Unhallowed relations between the sexes there are, dragging down humanity to the low- est degree of degradation — unhallowed love is a thing inconceivable. Love hallows everything WHAT LOVE IS LAWFUL ? 69 It touches-it is the one vivifying influence in human Ufe, it is the foundation of purity, the mother of heroism, the twin sister of rehgion. !, r t CHAPTER VII. WHAT IS TRUE LOVE? It is the most puzzling of all problems to be able to state, in accurate and philosophical terms, what true love is. As a matter of fact, it defies philosophy and challenges definition. It may be classed as pertaining to the super- natural, or super-rational, and therefore beyond the range of either reason or understanding. Besides, the world protests, and always will protest, against undertaking to reduce this subtle faculty to the range of ordinary knowl- edge. Humanity has clung to illusions from its earliest days ; as Huxley says, in one of his brutally frank expositions of human society, " There are savages without God in any proper sense, but none without ghosts." Religion has always appealed to human hearts from a super- natural point of view. No community ever ex- 70 WHAT IS TRUE LOVE? 71 isted in this poor world but has yearned for and clung to its mysteries. Love may be classed as a phase of religion, as one of the mysteries, one of the incomprehensible agencies which affect human life, character and destiny. Yet some things can be known about the operation of this mystic agency. We can, by dint of human wisdom, mark the well-defined distinction between love and passion, between a sentiment which is founded upon an apprecia- tion of soul qualities and that which is based solely upon sensual feeling. We can, with almost absolute certainty, pronounce certain cases of apparent love false and worthless. We can remark and note instances in which all signs and tokens of love's manifestation have been present, and yet proved fleeting and unsubstantial. We know from experience, that men and women are capable of having what they call love more than once, and in respect to more than one individual. It would be a step in the direction of true knowledge and higher wisdom if we could gain something like 72 LOVE. M ; a clear conception of what that love is which is all-enduring in its character and which, when it enters the human soul, enters to stay, to mould and to control forever. This ought not to be a problem beyond the range of human wisdom. Scarcely a day passes but we see men standing in public places and professing to unfold to their fellow beings what is the essence of true religion. The preacher says, " This, my friends, is true religion ; it is so clear that none can mistake it." As love and religion are so closely allied, it ought not to be more difficult for human wisdom to declare with equal confidence and with equal clearness — "This, my friends, is true love, it cannot be mistaken, the tokens are clear and unmistak- able." Unfortunately, the preacher does not always make his definition so clear as to satisfy all. At the very moment he is proclaiming his infallible definition, another fellow mortal in another public place is furnishing another definition, equally clear and equally unmis- WHAT IS TRUE LOVE? 73 takable, and so it may with confidence be affirmed that religion is still beyond the power of accurate definition. In this state- ment no diminution of its powers is involved — it is still the controlling force in human development. In the same way, it will probably be found difficult, if not impossible, to give an exposition of true love, that is to say, define and describe the genuine article so that all the world shall know it and recognize it. It must be perma- nently classed among the mysteries, but its potency suffers nothing by its inability of defini- tion. We can, nevertheless, reach a few basic prin- ciples which are essential, and we can discover, by dint of even human twilight judgment, the great and immutable principle upon which it rests, and which constitutes its essence and power. Nothing is more patent in the history of the race, than the capacity of self deception in this matter. So many incidents go to make up 74 LOVE. li emotional predilections towards another person, that all mortals are in perpetual danger of cherishing delusions in regard to their real feel- ings. We hear flippant talk at all times about "congeniality of disposition," "compatibility of temperament," "community of tastes and in- terests," " unity of aims," etc., as being the chief pillars upon which true and lasting love rests ; but experience shows we may be easily deceived in regard to all this. To illustrate. A man and woman are very much in love with each other — apparently ; the hours spent together pass sweetly ; he has no doubt that between the two there is a " congeni- ality of disposition," and she has no doubt that there is a "compatibility of temperament." Their interest in common subjects and aims is im- measurable because largely of the common interest in one another. In serene assurance of the full and majestic possession of the genuine article, they breathe the words of love, and, hand in hand, walk to the altar where anointed hands pronounce them one. WHAT IS TRUE LOVE? 75 Then they begin to jog along through the ordinary cares and pursuits of life ; monotony creeps in, doubts arise as to "congeniality of disposition," misgivings as to " compatibility of temperament"; in fact, by degrees, there is gen- erated a lack of sympathy which develops into indifference and separation of interests. While this feeling of dissatisfaction with the results of a love union is taking root, it may happen, in their wanderings to and fro in this densely populated world, that one of them may discover another ; it may be possible that the man may discover another woman in whom he finds, by pleasant intercourse, "congeniality of disposition " and " compatibility of tempera- ment " that, if they had been united, would have generated into eternal love and secured a life of unalloyed happiness. By a strange freak of fortune, simultaneously v/ith this great moral discovery, the woman may have had the fortune to have stumbled in passing through this world upon a man in whom she quickly, by means of occasional intercourse, discovers the true ideal i f 76 LOVE. of " congeniality of disposition " and " compati- bility of temperament." Then they forthwith begin to realize the enormous and far-reaching extent of the blunder which, under the disguise of ecstatic love, they have committed in forming this life union. If, indeed, this cruel barrier which, for political or state reasons, has been built up could at once be removed, how serenely and ecstatically could their souls enter into this Nirvana where love holds undisputed sway and breathes over its votaries the charm of fideless happiness. Presently, since frailty is one of the attributes of poor humanity, the desperate purpose of dis- regarding the barriers begins to take form in their newly awakened emotions. They discover that love is essential to soul growth ; they work out the delicate problem that God's approbation must necessarily rest upon pure, holy and all pervading love ; that anything that stands in the way of the full fruition of this is at war with Heaven's purpose. WHAT IS TRUE LOVE? ;; Then comes the momentous step. Social laws are ignored, marriage vows are forgotten, the sanctity of home is disregarded, all that pertains to human duty is laid upon the altar of this glorious divinity. At last, after having experienced the disappointments of a misguided union without " congeniality of disposition " and " compatibility of temperament," they are about to enter into the holy of holies, with the supreme sanction of heaven. An elopement, a few months of ecstasy, partly sensuous, abroad, shadowed all the time with moral sensibilities which obtrude themselves in spite of all ; they at last return to the duties of life's routine, and before twelve short months have rolled their round, they are found dissatis- fied, repentant and nagging each other. It is very difficult to know just exactly what constitutes " congeniality of disposition " and "compatibility of temperament." This instance has been g?ven, not in a spirit of cold cynicism, but rather as a mirror to indicate \ \ i [ m SI »l 7B LOVE. i If 1 ii; the varying phases of self deception in respect to the relations between the sexes, and also to lead us humbly and tenderly to discover, if we can, upon what basis a life union founded upon love can be secured, which will not only stand the blows of all adversity, but endure the steady dripping of life's monotony and dull routine. A few safe precepts can be laid down in respect to the quality of love which endures, and I am going to name a few of them. But probably to very dull ears, and to a thankless world. No one wants to have his love reduced to precept ; nobody wants to have to reflect and ponder when choosing the companion of a life time ; no one is willing to be guided by precept when around him is the halo of sweet sentiment, nor will unions in this poor world ever be formed upon a philosophical basis. Nevertheless, in all truth, we can name a few essentials to that love which is destined to be lasting and capable of surviving all contingencies of years together. Love, if it have any quality beyond the mere sensuous appreciation of beauty and personal I WHAT IS TRUE LOVE? 79 qualities, must come from heaven and be a part of one's religion, affecting directly the soul and all of its aims and aspirations. Religion itself is after all a simple matter — though it is sublime in its character, inconceivable in its effects, it simply consists in one word, in merging self, selfish interests, and selfish aims into a cheerful and happy compliance with the aims and pur- poses of divine wisdom — this is love. Nothing can be relied upon in respect to our relations to another human being until the stage has been reached in which we would not gladly give up, abandon or cast aside, any selfish wishes for ourselves or for our own happiness in order that all that we have in our power could be poured out freely and unreservedly for the happiness and well being of the loved one. A man who says, at one brea*-h — " I love you," and at the same moment is benaing his thoughts upon anything which pertains to himself in this con- nection, deceives himself — he loves not. The woman who says, " I love," and at the same moment is cherishing within her breast a 8o LOVE. i thought which pertains to her own happiness, her own honor or comfort, is deceiving herself — she loves not. If, in conjunction with this love, she is allowing a part of her thoughts to rest upon a beautiful home, social importance, worldlj'- honors and pleasures, then there may be little thrills and there may be wild protesta- tions, and there may be swift beatings of the heart, but these are not love. It is only when she has reached the point that she feels that this man has within him a spark of that which is good and sincere and manly, and capable of achieving that which is high, and worthy, though perhaps not fame nor worldly applause, and feeling her own heart secure under the shadow of his wing and enshrined in his heart, she is willing to face all the possible exigencies and catastrophies which life can unfold and look forward to an immortal destiny gilded by this love, that she may feel sure that her love is of heaven and will endure. Love is to all intents and purposes the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount carried into human WHAT IS TRUE LOVE? 8l relationship. Love is a sacred religious im- pulse, altruistic in its character, by which self is effaced and the interest of another made first and supreme. Love sits by an altar and wor- ships. Love opens the portals of the immortal world. When one loves he has entered into the kingdom of heaN^en. To come down to what seems like the practical, let it be said that no union for life can be happy, and no love can exist, that is not based upon a recognition of some essential goodness and worth. It must not be assumed by this that the object of love must be perfect nor free from great and conspicuous faults. Indeed, the sweetest characters the world has ever seen have been those who, like the apostle Peter, are capable of terrible moral weakness. But we cannot love any being in whom we do not see some great quality, some good quality, some capacity to achieve. In all our love- making which is to be permanent there must be honesty, truth and principle. Falsehood and deception are incompatible with even the 1 82 LOVE. thought of love. Respect seems a common- place word, yet respect precedes the possibility of true love. Love itself is the greatest moral force in the world. Most of our sins come from self and self gratifications. The lusts, appetites and passions which spring from fleshly instincts, are the things which breed vice and misery. Love is the one controlling, never-dying impulse in the world which is raising man out of himself and lifting him to higher impulses, to nobler aims and more glorious aspirations. ; , CHAPTER VIII. GEOGRAPHY. What has geography to do with Love ? Per- haps the word is too absurd. Possibly it would have been better to have headed this chapter "Circumstances." It is not intended, heaven knows, to enter into a description of the surface of the earth, to note its continents, oceans, bays and archipelagos, but to note the system by which wooing, love-making, and mating are carried on in this world. It must be obvious that circumstances play an important part in this, and, perhaps, the most conspicuous feature of this chapter of accidents is the one involved in locality. It is but rarely that a man living in Asia falls in love with a woman living in America, that is unless he happens to meet her in Asia or ir< accidentally brought in contact with her in America. In other words, contiguity is the basis upon which most of the love-making 83 t> IMAGE EVALUATrON TEST TARGET (MT-3) /. ,.<' €^x 1.0 I.I *~ iiiiM " m IIIM 12.2 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 .4 6" - ► ^ p» # (^ /^ v: 'cM ^/ J^i ■P^ y .^ Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716) 872-4503 w- /. & ?> 84 LOVE. of the world proceeds. This is what is meant by placing this cold and prosaic word at the head of this chapter. Once more we stand in danger of jarring upon the sweet chords which are strung upon human illusions. This poor prosy world is brimful of lovers all the time. The sweet process proceeds by day and by night, and is heard around the world with more perpetual certainty than the echoes of that patriotic drum-beat which follows the sun within the domains of the British Empire. To these love-laden mortals who are breathing their /ows and revelling in love tokens, there is an ever present sense that a mystic and im- mortal halo hovers over all. They have caught a ray of heaven's own light ; the glow of immor- tality lights up the atmosphere in which they breathe ; the divine afflatus has descended upon them like a dove — it is all a beautiful mystery, a working out of a destiny ordained in heaven, probably a part of an immutable plan devised by the omniscient from the beginning. GEOGRAPHY. 85 How absurd and irreverent to beings in this lurid atmosphere to intimate that the fact of contiguity, proximity had brought all this about, and that accident might have prevented their ever meeting in this world. Who that understands the processes which constitute human interest does not realize the immense potency of neighborhood. A man named John Smith living 100 miles away is not likely to be of any importance to me whatever, but this same John Smith living next door to me, my near neighbor, is very likely to become, from various reasons, a matter of interest to me. He has capacity, owing to his proximity, to make life disagreeable and he has capacity to make life agreeable. If, perchance, he has a young, well formed and interesting daughter, the chances are, if I be of approximate age, that interests are much more likely to spring up in respect of this young woman than if accident had located her 100 miles away, certainly a greater probability of interest being generated i * 86 LOVE. than if she had been destined to dwell in another continent. Another thing to be noted is that constant in- tercourse begets interest, sometimes positive, sometimes negative. A prisoner in his lonely cell begins to take an interest in the little mice that dart in upon him from crevices in the wall, and it has been known that these wild rodents have been by degrees so tamed by little atten- tions that they have come to take their food from his hand, and he has come to give every one of them a name, and to conceive an interest of the most intense character, so complete as to absorb his attention and awaken his active sympathies. Such is the power of constant contact. It has been stated by some profane writer that if one were compelled to live six months with a cat he would generate a fondness for the animal, not, it is true, the same kind of fondness which would develop between two human beings, and especially between a man and a woman, but it is to be feared that the principle upon which many men and women are drawn together GEOGRAPHY. 87 is substantially based upon the inevitable conse- quences of an interest which is generated and strengthened by intimacy. It would be pleasant to believe that all casos of love-making in this world were mere illustra- tions of the great Calvinistic doctrine of election. It would be indeed beautiful if every man and woman under the influence of love, be it of the deeper or be it of the more superficial type, could feel assured that the object had been designed for his or her particular delectation from the be- ginning of the world, and had been sent, meteor- like, by a divine providence across the path to bless, to expand, to complete. Perhaps it is so. Perhaps it is the philosopher who is the tyro in this examination, but the outlook of the general system of love-making going forward in the world seems to an ordinary observer tremen- dously as if geography and other accidental phenomena were having considerable to do with the process. A man and woman meet and become fairly intimate, and an interest beyond that which 88 LOVE. generally prevails among persons living in the same community is generated. They walk together in the twilight or in the moonlight; they think a good deal of each other. The little idea darts into the heads of both of them that perhaps they would become very- fond of each other, and so, perhaps, they would, if circumstances permitted them to con- tinue to walk together by moonlight and to sit and converse in the gloaming. But accident calls one of them away to a distant locality. Gradually this intimacy fades away ; he begins to walk in the twilight with some other person a hundred miles away, while another comes in to sit and talk with her in the gloaming in the same old spot. The new-comer obtains the field and they marry — perhaps each is happier with the new found love than with the old one if it had gone on ; perhaps not ; at any rate it is difficult to work out the problem of election and fore-ordination in either of the cases ; it looks to the ordinary human observer very like a question of geography. GEOGRAPHY. 89 But do I not feel the tingling in my ears at this moment of the fierce denunciation of such frigid and soulless philosophy? Happy lovers, redolent with love's perfume, turn indignantly a\7ay from this page and say : " Thank God this is not our case, the hand of immortal destiny rests upon our love, locality has had nothing to do with it, accident constitutes no phase of it." Well, we have heard, even in these modern times, when science is making the world so small and invading the last recesses of romance and mystery, of ships that pass in the night. What shall we say, then? Is there no such thing as pure love on the face of this earth ? Is all romance, all love, the result of chance or circumstance, or locality ? Has heaven nothing to do with love-making any more ? Nay, I say — heaven overlooks all things pertaining to this world, and every event in every sphere of life occurs in conformity with immutable laws framed by inscrutable wisdom and worked out under a plan which has never ceased to be guided by omnipotent fingers. The political T 90 LOVE. events of the world are under the guidance of almighty power. Human history is moulded at every point by the Supreme power which created the world, holds it in its place in the universe, and disposes of the destinies of its long procession of inhabitants. But, while this is true, it is nevertheless equally true that all these events move according to law and not according to caprice. The hand of almighty providence guides the ship across the sea, but if the timbers are rotten or the waves too fierce, or the hidden rock is struck, the ship founders. Is not the same principle to apply to love- making? Is that not also under law? The sparrow mates with the sparrow which is near, and mates not with the sparrow which is afar off. The dove in America coos to the dove within the range of its usual orbit of being, and does not mate with the dove many miles away. Love is begotten between man and woman by the accident of their being thrown together, not that all persons who are thrown together love. Intimacy may beget repulsion and dislike, but GEOGRAPHY. 91 no love can there be without proximity. Love does not mysteriously float through the air and inflate hearts whose owners have never met. We have heard of marriages contracted by cor- respondence between persons who have never met. They met at marriage and, under the system upon which the love-making of the world is carried on, their chances of generating interest and affection are precisely the same by dint of the contact after marriage as if there had been the usual antecedent devotion. It must, however, be regarded as safer and better that antecedent opportunities of mutual study should be afforded, and love should be the re- cognized condition upon which marriage should take place. But when one is compelled to observe, in the marriages which are the result, not only of antecedent opportunity, but of most ecstatic affection, the frequent falling off of devotion as the years of wedded life extend, a painful doubt sometimes enters the mind as to whether equally satisfactory results are not obtained when Deacon Dolittle drives over in a 92 LOVE. 1 ceremonious fashion to the elderly Miss Flight and in grave business-like accents proposes marriage. And yet we must not forget that Love is the greatest thing in the world. That the influence of love is a potent and perpetual factor in mould- ing human destiny we must not ignore. With the ecstasy which comes from early love, from sweet courtships where holy impulses are shared, and where the soul is born anew, new vistas of life are opened up. Altogether this love-making and marriage-making are a bit of a muddle in the wo Id. There are marriages without love and marriages with love ; there are marriages without the pretence of love and there are mar- riages with the illusions of love; there are marri- ages which are permanently happy and there are marriages permanently unhappy, and marriages which are neither very happy nor very miserable. There are marriages gilded by romance which lasts, and marriages gilded by romance which expires. There are marriages the result of acci- dent, of interest, of selfishness and of passion. GEOGRAPHY. 93 There are marriages which are the consummation of a holy affection which consecrates the union, and leads the mated pair from one stage of life to another until, in a ripe and beautiful old age, they cling to each other as warmly as when, in the freshness of youth, their eyes first looked love and their hearts first beat together in a common embrace. Looking broadly over the world with all its jumbles and illusion and counterfeit, we have no difficulty in reaching the conclusion that humanity cannot give up its love-making. We have to take it as it is with its incongruities, its self deceptions and its fatal blunders. In spite of all these it is the greatest thing in the world. It has the greatest capacity for pouring happiness into the human heart of any impulse of which humanity is capable. God help the world if men and women ceased to love. The great impelling force, which, generation by generation, century by century, and cycle by cycle, is lifting humanity up to the true ideal of life, is this love. We can- not undertake to harness it ; we cannot guard 94 Love. against its abuses ; we cannot make it flow always >n the right channels, or prevent it from running into all sorts of errors and producing unhappi- ness, but we cannot do without it. Its essence is of heaven and its mission holy. I CHAPTER IX. CAPRICES. The development of love-making in this world is many sided. Sometimes it looks as if it were a sort of paradisaical glory, illumi- nating the earth and the grey dome of heaven ; at other times it looks like mockery, a delu- sion, a temporary infatuation, which turns to ashes the very instant it has secured recognition- We read in real life of the great ones of the world who have been inspired to do great things by the influence of love, and by love we mean sexual love. Almost every great man in the world has had one notable love affair, many, more than one, and the women whose great thoughts and sublime poetiy have charmed succeeding generations, first had their genius stirred by the influence of the soft emotion, love. We have shed tears over the story of the sweet romances of the world's heroes, and then we say — great is the power of love. 95 96 LOVE. ^' On the other hand, when we come to examine closely all the circumstances of these loves, we find many phases that shatter our faith in the divine passion. Immortal poems have been written under the influence of a pair of bright eyes ; but when the pair of bright eyes have be- come linked for life with the genius whose imagination was so fired with their flashing beauty, in the dull routine of life they have ceased to burn and, perhaps, have been slighted, ignored and made to feel that another divinity had usurped their place. The greatest test of love is not the wonderful things which, at its first birth, it inspired — the greatest test is h'^w it survives the monotony of constant contact and daily meeting. Hence it is not surprising to discover, in read- ing the recorded history of love, that its greatest influences have very often been exercised when the love has been hopeless. That this great passion between the sexes has had wonderful effects on human destiny is undoubted ; but whether the successful loves or the unsuccessful CAPRICES. 97 loves have had the most influence is a question for philosophers yet to determine. Carlyle re- veals in Sartor Resarius^ in unmistakable terms, the power which love exercises over men. We have a not unfamiliar story of how his great soul went out to a woman who passed him by for someone else who had a better position and better prospects. This bitter disappointment stirred the philosopher to heroic efforts in the field of achievement. His fancy afterwards rested upon another woman, to all appearances higher and worthier than the first. Her he seems to have neglected until after her death. What would have happened if he had been more successful in his first venture — would he, after the first glowing romance was over, have gone to his hermitage in the top of the house on Cheyne Row and left his mate to grapple with the problems of life alone and lonely ? Tennyson has said in the greatest of his poems. In Memoriam, " 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." The outlook of the world almost justifies a person, 7 T 98 LOVE. without the charge of cynicism, in asking whether it is not better to have loved and lost, from the subjective point of view, than to have loved and won ; which means, put in plain words, that when love is awakened its ennobling influences are far reaching and sublimely inspir- ing in their effects on the heart of the lover so long as the object of his passion remains — as Shakespeare put it — " a bright and beautiful star." Its influence for inspiration is great, but how often, in this poor work-a-day world, when the object is won and has become a possession, the mysterious influence wears off", the charm becomes dulled by constant familiarity and the romance becomes attenuated. Then take up the song of the poets in com- memoration of love and its influences ; we find beautiful words which tell of the magic of auburn locks, of sunny hair, of laughing eyes, or cherry lips. We revel in the sublime mad- ness which the glowing words of passion express. All the precious adjectives of our fertile lan- guage are strung together like pearls and laid CAPRICES. 99 as tribute upon the altar of the loved one. This literature has uplifted the race and made rosy the horizon of human life. The story of love's devotion and love's sacrifices — how worldly in- terests have been flung aside, and men and women have wandered over the earth with only one aim, to once more revel in the presence of the loved one. How dangerous seas have been crossed and daring and heroic deeds have been done, all impelled by the divine influence of love. We have seen this earth watered by bitter tears that have been wrung from tender hearts by love's tragedy. We have felt the ecstatic glow of happiness that could not be measured, and left nothing beyond in this earth to be desired — all kindled by the mighty power of love. We have seen the pages of litera^^ure filled with its protestations and most burning thoughts, awak- ened solely by the influence of love, and hence we have come rightly to consider it the greatest thing in the world. But all this great volume of love lore which has so enriched, elevated. 100 LOVE. and exalted mankind, must be regarded in the abstract. It is the concrete that kills. Oh, the caprices — the unfathomable cap- rices of human love-making. Napoleon, when young and socially obscure, with his foot just upon the first round of the ladder which he was to mount so high, formed sweet and ecstatic fancies regarding Josephine, who was a woman of taste, culture and social experience. He captured her fancy and secured her hand. Shortly after, he set out for Italy as Com- mander-in-Chief of the Army and achieved wonderful things. Every day, in the midst of his marvellous campaign, he sent letters breath- ing the youthful lover's affection, and all the fond desires of his life were hers. Afterwards, greater successes, greater achievements. She, fearful of the great hazards of overwhelming success, counselled him to moderation of aim — he kissed her hand in mock gallantry, and hinted he could get along without her. Of course Napoleon could never love — he was great enough to make love but not great CAPRICES. lOI enough to love. He had the commanding force of character which would compel regard and devotion of women as a temporary fascina- tion ; he had not the sublimity of soul and the capacity for self-effacement which would have enabled him to cherish the immortal impulse of love at all hazards and against all odds. Of course Napoleon was not altogether like other men, and yet, perhaps, he was not alto- gether unlike most men in this regard. It is so difficult to distinguish between great soul ^ 2 and the flickering throbs of temporary infatuation. The poet says — Can I think of her as dead and love her for the love she bore? No, she never loved me truly, love is love for evermore. The poet was right, but he must evidently have been thinking of the subjective side. The influ- ence of true love upon the human heart is im- mortal and lives forever, and has its influence in shading, coloring and fixing the character and destiny. The subjective influences of love are, beyond all doubt, immortal and exist forever- 102 LOVE. more ; but whether or not it can be established, with absolute and indubious proof, that a poor mortal can feel a passion toward another fellow- mortal which will survive inexorably the incidents and chances of even the ordinary compass of a human life, is a question still to be pondered upon. It looks as if instances of the kind had occurred. Many of the instances, when they come to be weighed, do not comply with the full character of the test. There are cases in which there was separation by death or by adverse fortune. Those beautiful romances have lived and fructified in immortal memory. What would have occurred if exposed to the corroding influence of routine is another matter. Let it not be understood for a single instant that between men and women it is not possible for love to exist which will bear all these tests. Indeed, in the midst of muchthatis unsatisfactory and much that is spurious in human love, the world and all parts of the world have been, since authentic history began, brightened by instances of husbands and wives who have lived a beautiful CAPRICES. 103 love-lit life, preserving all their lover-like feelings and indulging in sweet love tokens, until, in mature age, they have looked into eyes dimmed by age, but undimmed in fancy, and felt and realized all that love implies. These examples will no doubt continue to beautify the world — let us hope to multiply, as a fuller realization of what love means is borne in upon the world, and religious influences have lifted up the race to a higher appreciation of the mission of altruism. The only point is that, in the initiatory stages of love-making, nothing can be predicted as to the final result of the proposed love union. Ardor, violence of passion, fervent protestations, frenzy of wooing, afford no guarantee of the existence in sweet reciprocity of a full and complete love which not only gilds to its latest hours this life, but extends beyond the bounds of time into the endless cycles of eternity. CHAPTER X. MARRIED LIFE. M The love-making of the world goes on won- derfully well, in the main, until the marriage state is reached and then the great problems open up. It has become a matter of common comment throughout the civilized world that the ardor of lovers quickly subsides after the honeymoon is over. Pictures are drawn of two happy lovers seated in some bower, wrapped in each other's arms, gazing into each other's eyes with rapture. This is just before marriage. One year after, the same couple are pictured seated with their backs to each other, one read- ing a newspaper and the other yawning. Novel- ists, as a rule, when they have conducted their lovers safely to the marriage altar, close the narrative. We are left to draw the inference from this that love's drama is safely concluded, and all that remains is happiness. i MARRIED LIFE. 105 Some one says, perhaps, that in most instances it is happiness. Our genial optimist will throw a glance of his eye over the homes of civiliza- tion, and say that love still reigns in most in- stances, and so it does — more or less. But it is not precisely the kind and character of love which the world would adopt for an ideal, nor the kind and character of love which formed the ideal of the lovers in the ante-nuptial days. The bald truth may as well be told in this matter. Marriage is an extremely important and bind- ing relationship. Children come as a mutual responsibility and a tremendous tie. These children are a part of their own flesh and blood, and they imply relationships the holiest and greatest that can be thought of in connection with the affairs of this poor life. Again, their interests are common. Their home is sacred against the world. They are there to guard their nest with their common lives. They have common friends, common associations, linked together by a thousand i :#■' I06 LOVE. ) ! i incidents which go to cement a common sym- pathy. The tie is a binding one and is not easily broken ; and, even if the law permitted it to be broken, a sense of pride makes each party shrink from a public acknowledgment that their love had been a delusion and their marriage a failure. There is ever present the memory of early days, the romance of first meeting, of the interchange of first vows, the ecstasy of the first fond embrace and the first warm kiss. Indeed, everything from a worldly point of view tends, and most fortunately and happily tends, to link together married people and to make them one in aim, in thought, in purpose. And yet, despite this fact, we know that, in the majority of instances, they are not one in sympathy and not one in aim, outside of the common aim of advancing the interests of the household. We do know that, in the majority of instances, the love which was vowed before standing at the altar, has cooled, that the glamor of the romance has worn off. Reflec- tions, tinged with disappointment and ending in MARRIED LIFE. ' 107 "You a sigh, are indulged in by both parties, no longer love me," has been addressed by wives to husbands and husbands to wives in multi- tudes of cases, and even if these pathetic words were not uttered, a sense of indifference mani- fested by a lack of interest, an absence of love tokens, and an indulgence in harsh words and bitter recriminations, would suggest the phrase with more strength and more pungency than any words could convey. Sometimes, if not often, the feeling assumes the form of active and acute aversion — this means misery. What is the safeguard against this crowning human misfortune? A world which consisted in an aggregation of homes dominated by love would be a millennium. When love dominates the earth then the kingdom of heaven has come to this world. The kingdom of heaven is a state, not a unit of space or time. The real difficulty is not the positive unhappiness of homes but the absence of sentiment, of affection, of sympathy. It is the eternal drone, the in- stallation of dullness, the enervating effect of io8 LOVE. « 1 '■ monotony. These are the things which eat the hearts out of married persons and rob life of the thousand joys which the imagination of youth has prefigured. The chief cause of these unsatisfactory homes is, of course, the absence of love, but even love is subjected in its every day usages to many in- fluences which seem, on the face of them, to be quite human, and much of the indifference and negative character which robs home of wedded happiness might be avoided by right beginnings and a few little rules of life, simple in them- selves, but constituting, in the aggregate, habit and character, and morals. It is impossible to fix the blame of this dull- ing influence upon either husbands or wives as a class, and in most instances it would be an ex- tremely difficult matter to apportion the respon- sibility. A few things, however, can be pointed out with confidence as resulting inevitably in coldness and unhappiness. The mere incident of familiarity is a subtly dangerous element in respect to human relations. MARRIED LIFE. 109 Nearly every one of us has ideals, and a sort of cherished worship for the mysterious and un- known. The beings immediately around us may be likened to islands which we have ex- plored ; we know of their qualities and capaci- ties ; we have noticed the barren soil, the arid hills and the dreary wastes which are to be found among the green spots, sweet valleys and the cool groves. We love to cherish the belief that there are islands far out at sea which may be all foliage and flowers, all fertility and beauty. We set sail full of hope and joy, in the prospect of discovery. When we find them, there, too, after exploration, are the dreary wastes and the unbeautiful plains. In beginning, therefore, a life-long existence with another being, it would be well to bear in mind ever that the one thing to be guarded against is the fatal tendency of familiarity, of routine and of dullness. The danger to married happiness does not consist in any special change of heart or a sudden turning from love to repul- sion — it is a creeping in, from day to day and no LOVE. hour to hour, of the little carelessnesses and neglects which eventuate in indifference and dis- appointment. Some one has written a poem entitled, Re- membrancey beginning with these words : " Cold in the grave, and fifteen wild Decembers, From these brown hills have melted into Spring, Faithful indeed the love is that remembers, Through all these years of change and suffering." And again comes another passage : — " Sweet love of youth, forgive if I forget thee, "While the world's tide is hurrying me along, Other desires and other hopes beset me, Hopes that obscure but cannot do thee wrong." In this beautiful interpretation of undying love we see that even when death has snatched away the loved one and we have nothing but the memories of the sweet lover days, even then other desires and other hopes beset and obscure. The danger is still greater when the loved object has not been snatched away, for then the glamor of separation and of memory is effaced by the carking influences of daily and hourly famili- arity. MARRIED LIFE. Ill Married persons, therefore, at the very begin- ning of their joint existence after marriage, should be ever conscious of the importance of heeding little things and little acts which, when developed into a habit or mode of living, are fraught with the gravest consequences. For example, the husband, secure in his wife's affection, is very apt to go abroad in the world serenely self contented, to find in the world a very considerable occupation of his attention and a fulfillment of his social needs. It may be that similar opportunities are available for his wife. But those who understand female char- acter know how vital to a woman is the constant possession and influence of love. To her, if she be a good and normal type of woman, love is everything and constitutes the very essence of her being, and without it a great blank is left, which neither social success nor worldly glory' can fill. Husbands are too apt to be uncon- scious of this, or, if it does dawn upon them, too apt to be insensible of its full meaning and con- sequences. As a result a blank is left in the \y 1 I tl2 LOVE. wife's heart, and the skeleton begins to take shape in the cupboard. This disappointment is too apt to exert a marring influence upon the devotion of the wife ; she is not as assiduous in her regard as she once was. The harsh or the complaining word is uttered and both stand confronted with the thought, which ought to be more appalling than in most cases it really is, that things have changed since they sat together in the garden and breathed words of love and devotion. This thought, after taking shape for the time, probably has its chastening effect upon both, and, recog- nizing the long apprenticeship they must serve together, the period of repentance and of con- trition arrives — they reproach themselves for their mutual neglect and they both resolve, amid the renewal of fond caresses, that the happy days of love shall come back, and they do come back for a few days, until indifference and routine once more get in their deadly work. Married people should begin at once, from the first day, with an unceasing heed to little atten- MARRIED LIFE. "3 the ten- tions. Though belonging absolutely to each other there is still an individuality remaining in each ; weaknesses that need to be ministered to ; aspirations which need to be encouraged ; hopes which need to be revived. If the husband could bear in mind always that this woman, whom Providence has confided to his care, would never be able to develop all that was best and brightest and most satisfying with- out the constant influence of love, this would work miracles in respect to the happiness of homes. And if the wife could always be con- scious of the fact that to retain the devotion and to inflame the imagination of this man with whom her destiny is linked, was the greatest concern of her life, this would have a revolution- ary eflect upon wedded lives. But why moralize further — all these things have been reiterated for generations, sometimes, perhaps, with good results, but most often unheeded and passed by as applying to some other than the particular case in hand. 8 rzz 114 LOVE. The real difficulty with married life is the absence of that far reaching love which effaces self and bends all its energies toward the happi- ness, the sweetness and the joy of the loved one. Most of the indifference, neglect and unhappi- ness which mark the married state throughout the civilized world are due to the fact that in- fatuation is often mistaken for love, and that a well developed sense of personal interest has been permitted to counterfeit a fervent and deep seated affection. CHAPTER XI. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. In the earlier chapters it has been intimated that love is the same in its essence no matter to what phase of human life it was applied, or what form its manifestations might take. It would be, indeed, an altogether circumscribed application of the word to apply it solely to the relationships between men and women. Love, it cannot be too often repeated, is a principle which, applied to human action in all forms, will work out the best and the highest results. It is the one single world power to which we must look for the reform of mankind, for the eleva- tion of humanity, for the redemption of the world. Hence, we may aptly and properly regard love as religion — it is the essential feature of religion. It is the one thing in religion which makes it a world power. "5 ii6 LOVE. The Christian religion finds its exposition in the Sermon on the Mount, and the essence of that famous pronunciamento is Love. Ostensibly, in looking over the world at this moment, we see but very small progress made toward the reali- zation of the absolute ideal of that Sermon. Nevertheless, a careful investigation of the pro- gress of the world and a comparison of the characteristics of this age with those that have gone by, reveals the encouraging fact that the Christian religion, the element of love in reli- gion, has exercised and is now exercising a far- reaching and potent influence in the develop- ment of the social life of the civilized world. It is proposed to deal a little with the power of love in the political development of the race and also in its social development. The two are distinct in their essential character, and yet they are so closely interwoven that it is not easy to disassociate them. To the great mass of mankind the idea of applying the principle of love to political affairs is regarded as approaching madness; it pro- POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. 117 voices a smile. Good people will tell you, with grave mien, that politics is essentially war, and that to attempt to apply the principle of love, of self-sacrifice, of self-abnegation to political action would be simple imbecility and lead to the acme of the preposterous. In social matters the absurdity is not popularly regarded as so apparent, and it is conceded by the enlightened thinkers that religious influences constitute a prominent factor in social development Examined carefully it will be found that, in this age of popular government, social and politi- cal development go practically hand in hand, and that anything that colors the one is bound to exert an influence upon the other, and it will be found, furthermore, that, whereas in practical politics it would indeed be preposterous in this age to apply literally the principle of altruism to political action, yet, nevertheless, political action is distinctly affected, from day to day and from generation to generation, by the permeation of the world with the altruistic principles of the Christian religion. I !* I Ii8 LOVE. Turn we for a moment to the most vital ques- tions which are now agitating alike the political and social world. The growth of popular government is itself one of the most striking phenomena of the present century. Originally power was in the hands of a very few privileged persons in the State — the king, the nobles and a few powerful commoners. Then the participa- tion in the government of the State was con- ceded to the great body of the middle classes. This was but a step. Then came the granting of the franchise to the masses. In most civil- ized countries we have practically universal suffrage, the only ones, if any, excluded, being those who are quite unfitted to exercise the responsibility of self-government. These principles have not been conceded upon any principle founded upon the science of politi- cal economy. If the great principle of th'* survival of the fittest, which is the natural selfish impulse of human nature, were given full scope, those having power would cling to it and would sternly and persistently refuse to surrender an POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. 119 inch. But we have seen these reforms accom- plished, not by the revolutionary action of the masses themselves, but by concessions which have come from those hitherto possessing power, and as the result, not only of a fair regard of the rights and principles involved, but of a mani- fest recognition that an innate sense of justice compelled a recognition of the rights of the masses. Hence, the principle of altruism is plainly discerned as working among the power- holding classes as a distinct agency for the con- ceding to others who have no power, co-equal rights in controlling the affairs of the State. Again, at this moment the masses, having acquired a share in the government of the country, are still socially at a disadvantage be- cause wealth has been accumulated in the hands of a few persons, and this wealth enables them not only to personally enjoy, in a larger degree than the masses of their fellow beings, the com- forts and pleasures of this life, but it likewise enables them to exercise, by dint of this wealth, an undue influence in respect to the moulding of 120 LOVE. legislation and in the development of the politi- cal and social affairs of the State. The capital- istic class has been able to exercise tremendous power over the laboring classes, and they have managed by means of this superior power to absorb to themselves all the profits of produc- tion. The laborer gets a wage which permits him to live in a very plain way ; the employer absorbs all the profit between the cost of the raw material, plus applied labor, and the price for which the finished product can be sold, and, on the faith of this surplus profit, he is not only able to live in luxury but to exercise superior influence in regard to legislation and national policy. In recent times a sharp conflict has developed between the rich, power-holding, capitalistic class and the masses, represented more conspicuously by what is called the laboring class. This con- flict opens up mighty problems and threatens, sooner or later, to convulse society and revolu- tionize the world. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. 121 If this contest were to be decided on the lines of pure human selfishness, then it would be a question of the survival of the fittest, and the wealthy and powerful classes would undoubtedly win. But that is not the way events are shaping themselves in these latter days. As a matter of fact the interests and rights of the masses are steadily gaining ground, not as a mere exercise of power by the masses, but because the prin- ciples of religion, working insensibly, day by day and hour by hour, among all classes, and not only moulding minds but affecting hearts, are leading to a recognition of the fact that equal- ity of opportunity, or equal chances, is the right and due of every mortal born into this world. Hence we see a steady concession of further rights and further privileges being made by the power-holding class to the poorer or laboring class, concessions which could never be hoped for and never be secured if the world were to be governed entirely by the abstract principles of self preservation. This steady and ever growing 122 LOVE. I movement in the direction of equality of rights, equality of opportunity, and a lessening of the enormous gulf between the rich and the poor, owes its existence and its momentum to the influence of the principles of altruism, which constitute the vital element of religion. Hence we see plainly the mission of love applied to the great problems of human pro- gress, political and social. The struggle will of course go on. No sudden indication of the millennium need be expected The growth of the race, so far as we can observe the methods, is to be by the slow process of evolution. The only important fact for social reformers to grasp is the direction in which human history is moving. If the principle of human sympathy and of human love is fading away, and if selfishness, greed, and inexorable competition are gaining ground, then the condi- tion of the race would indeed be awful to con- template ; but if the tokens are manifest of a steady growth in the direction of justice, the recognition of the rights of others, and a broad bl POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. 123 and deep-seated sympathy for human suffering and misery, then indeed the world is pursuing the course which leads to human happiness and human elevation, and all that need be done is to keep constantly infusing, by every proper agency, into the whole mass of mankind a more complete and thorough recognition of the altruistic principle of living. Those of us who have faith in the power which governs this universe can have no difficulty in finding the solution of all the great social and political problems which are at present worrying the world. It is the power of good on the one side fighting the power of evil on the other. It is the principle of love working toward one end and the power of selfishness working toward another. In such a contest all good persons can have no doubt as to the result. Amid dis- couragements and even reactions, the history of the race has shown a steady progress in the direction of higher ideals. Politicians may be selfish and continue to hold power by selfish methods ; individuals may still regard self-pre- 124 LOVE. servation as the first law, not only of the physical but of the spiritual world as well, but the seeds of love are planted within the human breast to work their will, and so, year by year and age by age, the power of love will work its vv^ay insen- sibly, silently, but surely ; and when it has achieved full sway then the millennium has been reached, the kingdom of heaven has come, self- ishness has been dethroned, and every problem which has agitated, is now agitating, and for a long while to come is likely to agitate human beings, will be solved by the simple but all pervading influence of Love. CHAPTER XII. RELIGION. Love plays its greatest part in religion. Not infrequently in the preceding pages the relation of love to religion has been incidentally referred to. If, profoundly considered, love and religion mean essentially one and the same thing, where Love works Religion is present. Where Love is not there is no religion. Philosophers and theologians have given us many excellent definitions of religion, and, while they differ in form and phase, most agree in essence and character. But, while erudition has worked out accurate definitions, we have, after all, to deal with popular impressions in regard to what religion is, and these are as varied, and, in many instances, as narrow and erroneous, as is the popular apprehension of the meaning of the word Love. A great number of persons in this world have only one meaning for love, and that MS 126 LOVE. is love-making between the sexes. So, many persons have only one definition of reh'gion, and that is going to church and proclaiming a deep concern about the salvation of their souls. If some one with the magic power of a great universal teacher could only make humanity understand what a simple thing religion is, depend upon it the world would have more interest in religion and less persons would regard it as a disagreeable thing which interfered with their enjoyment. Let us endeavor to put in as plain words as possible some current ideas abroad as to what religion means. Of course, nearly every person associates it in some way with God. The Christian religion recognizes and acknowledges one great supreme personality which created heaven and earth and controls the destinies of the universe. Other religions get the idea of a supreme ruler — the idea of God as a personality or as some manifestation of power. It may be as well to confine the consideration of religion, for the present, to the Christian religion. RELIGION. 127 nany I, and deep s. If great lanity )n is, more regard d with rds as what person The edges reated Hies of of a nality nay be ligion, ;a In addition to this idea of God, there is also associated with the popular idea of religion the necessity of proclaiming everywhere one's per- petual thought and feeling in respect of religious emotions. These expressions are usually asso- ciated with a church, chapel or meeting house. A popular definition of a religious man would be a man who talked a great deal about God, who proclaimed himself constantly a sinner, who expressed on all occasions the necessity of living nearer to God, of avoiding all sin, and of seri- ously desiring that every person else should be brought into his own elevated plane of religious feeling. All these things may be well in their way. It is desirable that we should live with a constant recognition of God. It is by no means uanatural that a subject of first importance with us should be often upon our lips. A wholesome dread of sin is an extremely proper thing for a mortal, and a desire to lead others toward a higher life is a most noble and elevated impulse. But all these are not religion. Going to church is not 128 LOVE. religion ; speaking in meeting is not religion ; denouncing sin is not religion ; loud preaching and evangelization are not religion. All these things may be done in the name of religion without reflecting one single ray of its real essence. On the other hand, a person may be profoundly religious who never attends church, ne^'er speaks of his tremendous heart struggle with the things which pertain to immortality, and never utters public denunciations of sin. What, then, is religion? A man arriving at maturity, not fully sensible of the vast destiny which surrounds a human being, looks down into the deepest depths of his soul for a solu- tion of this appalling problem. He finds him- self with a body mortal and certain to die ; he finds himself the possessor of an immortal existence, which cannot, by any will or power of his own, be terminated, and he finds that immortal part subject to the power and con- trol of an omnipotent being who holds him and his fate absolutely in the hollow of his hand. What he shall do with this immortal RELIGION. 129 igion ; aching [ these eligion ts real maybe church, itruggle ortality, sin. •iving at destiny down a solu- ids him- to die; immortal ■yr power inds that and con- olds him vv of his immortal cs ego, and how he shall guide it aright in view of its relation to an immortal destiny, is the greatest problem which ever did or ever can confront a sentient being. His first and perhaps gravest consideration is to ascertain, if possible, the character and dis- position of this supreme being upon whose will and purposes his fate hangs. The profoundest consideration, aided by all the evidence which nature and instinct, and, if need be, revelation, affords, leads to the sublime and assuring con- clusion that the essence of this Being is Love. That sin abounds, that unhappiness exists, that misery continues to stalk abroad in the land, do not in the slightest degree contradict or call in question the mighty fact that the government of this universe is based upon the principle of love, and that the application of the principle of love to every human thought, impulse and act, will produce happiness and peace. Therefore, we gain this general definition of religion. It is the placing of the will of the individual man in accord with the law of God. 9 , _ 130 LOVE. This is achieved simply and solely by the agency of Love. A human being clothed with an immortal destiny need not, in.order to "enter the kingdom of heaven," moan and lament, and groan and abase himself. He need not scourge the flesh or torment the spirit; he need not recite any creed or bow his knee to any form of faith ; h(i n-sed not offer up sacrifices nor indulge in gf' V. -"lling humiliations. Nay, more, all these tlirigs, • ;U not constitute religion, nor are they the means by which the soul of a finite being is placed in accord with the will of the infinite. What is the essential test of union with God ? It is that the soul of man, without reserve, and in perfect faith and simplicity, yields its own will and desire to the will and purposes of deity. This can only be done through the agency of love. It is the birth in the soul of a new con- ception of life and its duties. The natural impulse of humanity is to seek its own will, its own wishes, its own gratification and its own glory. Self crops up as a dominating impulse RELIGION. 131 J the mortal igdom in and e flesh ite any [ faith ; lulge in II these ire they te being infinite. thGod? rve, and its own of deity, rency of ^ew con- natural will, its its own impulse in natural man. When, after a due reflection upon the pahry character of all human aim and endeavor, in the light of the immortal destiny which is to come, a human soul reaches the sublime comprehension of the fact that the aims of self are not only purposeless but degrading, and that the Deity's supreme thought is the welfare and the uplifting of humanity by the agency of unmeasured love, and, placing itself unreservedly in the same attitude of mind and purpose, effaces self and acts and labors and strives in the line of divine purpose for the uplifting of others, then the mission of religion has been achieved. In this view Love becomes an overwhelming consideration in relation to human destiny, and we begin to realize the meaning of that inspired utterance of one of the early exponents of Christianity, Paul, when he says, " Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." Love applied to human action is the solution of human destiny. r 132 LOVE. It is simply the eflfacement of self and selfish aims and the acquiring of the true conception of life, namely, devotion to the service of others. God loves the world, loves mankind : all his laws and purposes are framed with a view of drawing human souls toward the highest happiness, the highest good, and the greatest beauty. When a man substitutes for the impulse of self gratifica- tion this devotion to the interests of others, then his own will has been lost and merged into the will and purpose of his creator and ruler. But it will be objected that the application of this principle of universal altruism will destroy all the conditions upon which the world exists and prospers and develops. The critic will object that if every human being guided his life by the pure impulse of love and self-efface- ment, we should have an end to civilization, an end to industrial life, and an end to worldly achievement. This is true, but it need occasion no immediate alarm. The principle of Love was taught in its clearest and sublimest form by the founder of the Christian religion nineteen ■: RELIGION. 133 hundred years ago, and it has been enforced by the learning, eloquence and zeal of organized Christianity all these years. It has created multitudes of churches, and millions upon millions of church professors and adherents, and still the world has not reached a stage in which the dominion of love in human affairs seems likely to sweep away the triumphs of civilization. Nothing can be plainer in respect of human history than that this old world has a mission and is likely to last as a world for many centuries to come, and as long as its function has to be performed its inhabitants will be adjusted to the essential conditions of worldly living. Nevertheless it is equally plain that the ultimate aim of the Christian religion is to permeate all mankind with the spirit of love. It is equally clear, in the progress of the ages, though the development is slow and almost imperceptible, that the seeds of this altruistic impulse in human hearts is gradually leading 134 LOVE. the world upward to higher ideals and better conceptions of human life and duty. We see further tokens of this in the wider range of benevolence, in the more sensitive regard for human suffering, and the ever-growing tendency of the aggregate of humanity to feel for and look after the woes and sufferings of others. All this impulse, manifesting itself in the sweep- ing away of one wrong after another, in the eternal succession of triumphs for truth, and the eternal succession of confusion and destruction of error and falsehood, is the outgrowth of the leaven of love slowly but surely permeating the world. It is the solution, as before said, of the whole problem of human destiny. Interest in the world and worldly affairs will not cease to-day nor to-morrow, nor a century from now. Men will still struggle and strive for selfish aims and purposes. Sin will continue its deadly influence ; kingdoms will be Tjunded ; fortunes built up ; palaces erected and contriv- ances for material comfort will be invented and perfected. But this influence of love, contend- RELIGION. 135 ing against all the combined influences of selfishness, sin and worldliness, will, in the eternal process of things, increase its power, and finally overcome all counter agencies and reign triumphantly in every human heart. When this has come to pass then worldly achievement and civilization are of no account A world dominated by Love has ceased to be a material world — it has become a spiritual world — the kingdom of heaven has come to pass in this world. The purpose of Christian revelation has been achieved — Love has fulfilled its mission, and humanity has reached the goal at which there is nothing left for which to long. i CHAPTER XIII. love's essence. Is not the essential character of Love now beginning to dawn upon us ? It is seen to be in reality religion, the conformity of the human soul to the Divine mind ; it is the rising superior to self and the inhaling of the spirit of consecra- tion. The instant a human soul feels arising within him purposes higher than selfish advance- ment, broader than immediate benefit, r look- ing to the ultimate condition of the wd. .n all its aims and purposes, that is the token of love. Apply this to life in its relation to the sexes, and there dawns on us the means of determining definitely between true love and its counterfeit. No one can be said to love until the mind has grasped the broad and essential basis of self- effacement. The love of man for woman or woman for man is essentially the same as the love which constitutes religion. It is simply the 136 love's essence. 137 application of the higher ideals of life to human relations. The heart must be imbued with the spirit of love, and when a man truly loves a woman, he is a lover in every sense, and his heart is animated by that appreciation of higher things which makes him at the same moment a spiritual being endowed with religion. This definition, it must be confessed, is a discouraging one — it is not the basis upon which most human loves are founded. The consciousness of it is no element ; it is not necessary that this high altitude of spiritual emotion, generated by love, should become a conscious cond, on of mind in order to partake of the character of genuine love. Indeed, our best and highest emotions are those of which we are unconscious. The man whose soul is most imbued with religious impulse is probably least conscious of it. The effusive declaration of religion is a token of weakness and invites a doubt. The plainest way, perhaps, of reaching a determination of what is true love between the sexes is to deal with negatives. To become i ii 11 138 LOVE. greatly infatuated with a woman is not love ; to have a yearning desire to possess a woman is not necessarily love ; to recognize qualities which make a suitable companion or a desirable wife is not love ; to pour out fulsome panegyrics and to dedicate fervid verse is not love ; to lavish gifts, to indulge in gushing tokens, to keep vigils — all these are not love. When, in the case of either party to an engagement, the relationship is affected by the loss of property, that can be safely predicated as a case in which love is wanting. When an engagement is broken because some dishonor attaches to some member of the affianced's family, then the love is defective. I have in mind a case in which a very worthy man, moving in the best social circles, was engaged to a very excellent young woman enjoying equal social advantages. It happened that her sister became entangled in an unfortunate episode for which she was in no way responsible. The love between these two had seemed extremely ardent, and not a doubt existed in her mind in regard to his devotion, LOVE'S ESSENCE. 139 but when he became aware of the incident that threw a social stigma upon her sister, with many protestations of continued regard, he announced that, owing to the views and feelings of his family, it would be necessary to terminate the engagement. The case is one of multitudes that are occurring constantly in the world. It proves the absence of genuine love. It demonstrates that self and selfish and worldly considerations are permitted to weigh, and, when these rule, true love is absent. It is only when the heart has caught the essence of God's divine spirit and loses self in the sublime devotion to the interests and welfare of another — that is love. As long as self looms up as a feature in the relations and has aims and interests of its own to achieve — the love is not perfect. The love that will last and endure not only the blows of adversity, but the more trying incidents of familiarity and routine, must be purely altruistic in its character and akin to religion. Let it not be understood that love which does not reach this highest ideal is altogether un- !'. 140 LOVE. worthy or worthless. Any impulse of the heart in the direction of adoring is heavenward in its tendency. A man who loves, even if he does not love wholly, supremely and religiously, yet, nevertheless, is better for having loved. The influence of tender emotion is always elevating to the human heart ; self is put aside somewhat ; the spirit of higher regard for others is devel- oped ; the horizon of life is brightened ; the moral conception of living is purified ; the capacity to think noble thoughts and to do noble deeds is expanded. None of us, as a matter of fact, can pretend to reach the ideal in our human relations. There is too much of the world about us ; too much frailty within us. But our love-making in spite of its illusions and imperfections is still, as it ever has been, one of the great impulses heavenward of the race, — always discriminating clearly between love and passion. The mere fleshly desire has no elevat- ing influence. It is base and degrading, and constitutes no feature whatever in any concep- tion of love. But even in this material earth- love's essence. 141 ind ind tep- ith- bound world, Love is day by day, in all grades of social life, and under all conditions, exercising its influence and throwing its charms over life. It keeps alive sentiment ; it awakens romance ; it quickens endeavor ; it modifies selfishness and gives birth to elevated thoughts and exalted aims. Imagine for a moment the condition of the world if love-making were to cease, and all the tender relations between the sexes come to an end. Picture a condition of society in which never again should two young forms walk in the moonlisfht ; never more should words of love be whispered in the ear, and never again should be seen the drooping eye, or felt the throbbing heart. Fancy the mass of humanity going for- ward with the routine of life unsanctified by the sweet emotion of cherished love ; the wedding bell no longer sounding in the land ; the bridal veil no longer worn ; the drama no longer enacted at church altars ; the heart untouched forever by the sweet melody of Love's divine music ; no quickening of the heart as the soft :■ i 142 LOVE. air of spring awoke the violets, and roses wafted their perfume in vain to hearts dead to human affection. Who would wish to live in such a world ? What would become of its poetry, its sentiment, its religion ? What influence so potent to lead the thoughts heavenward ? What substitute as a mtans of spiritual life ? All good men and women have somehow faith in the destiny of the race. They recog- nize sin as abounding, and evil rampant in the world ; crime and misery still hold their high carnival ; low ideals are numerous ; the best impulses are rewarded by a sneer ; masses are deaf to the call to a higher life, and yet with all we note the influence of the leaven of love in human life, and rest upon the immutable belief that, as time rolls on, God's purpose will be accomplished and this world shall, in the process of the ages, be redeemed and brought into re- cognition of the true end and aim of existence. He who cannot cling to this large hope must have dreary conceptions of human destiny. love's essence. 143 There is no middle ground between such a hope and blank despair. By what agency is this great regeneration to be brought about ? By religion, say some. Yes, by religion. But religion is love. Love acting day by day, year by year, century by century, upon the human heart, lifts it by slow and steady stages to that conformity to the ideal which constitutes reconciliation with God and submission to His purpose — dethroning self banishing sin, and installing eternal peace. CHAPTER XIV. l'envoi. m -■ V \ ' :'■ ; '; ■ : ' ; \ ' n 1 !i ii ii And now we send forth our little book into the world to work its way, perhaps to be over- looked in the rush of events. Its aim has been simply to deal with an important faculty of spiritual beings — the most important, perhaps, of any. It is not the first time the subject has been dealt with, and no attempt ha^, been made to deal with it pro- foundly now. It is only one more contribution to the mass, a further effort to illumine a subject which is not only full of mystery, but very generally misconceived. Love has been in these pages elevated to the altitude of religion, and an effort has been made to induce humanity to see in religion that simplicity of conception which would make it attractive to men and easily embraced by all. 144 l'envoi. 145 ito er- an lost first no )ro- ;ion ject lery lese an Isee lich ily Such has been the motive, and yet it is not to be expected that it will escape its criticisms or be spared its censures. It has been my unfor- tunate experience that those things which were done with the best, purest, and highest motives have been the victims of the most ungenerous imputation and the occasion of the most cynical suspicion, while those things which have com- manded the most applause have usually been superficial in their character and intrinskally worthless. I expect to hear the optimist declare that the caprices in love among men and women set forth in these pages are libels upon modem society and the outgrowth of a diseased imagin- ation. On the other hand men of the world will sneer at the divine character of love and its potency as a great moral force. I shall expect to see the devotee of a creed declaim against the profanity of making love religion, and, especially, will he deride the idea that a spiri- tual emotion conceived by one human being 10 146 LOVE. toward another can partake of the essential character of religion. To all these I can only with deference submit that Love in its essence is the same in whatever form it manifests itself, that Love is a vital factor in human society and is the vivifying influence at work in the uplifting of the race, and that its exercise is imperfect in the hands of finite beings. We have scarcely an instance of a perfectly religious man in these times. It is admitted that even those who have entered into spiritual life are still subject to the influences and temptations of nature; that self is not absolutely effaced, and that imperfection is written upon the achievements of the best of mortals.'' This imperfection is as notable in the exercise of the faculty of Love as in any other. As Love itself constitutes the essential element of religion and fails in its perfect work in its highest function, so it is liable to fail by imper- fection in relation to its manifestations between mortal and mortal. Nevertheless, as the world is at present constituted, this little germ of lofty l'envoi. 147 emotion, which is generated by the accident of sex in the world, is an all-important factor in the growth and development of mankind. Still more trivial criticisms may be foreseen. Some kindly disposed person will attribute the explanation of the transient character of many instances of connubial love to personal experi- ence. No answer to this form of criticism can be made — it is based on no broad or elevated view of the question, is unimportant to its elucidation and impertinent in its conception. The lover who, at the moment of its perusal, is revelling in some wild exuberance of his amatory faculties, will declare that his love, or perhaps her love, is not of the character, or subject to the conditions, set forth in the chapters dealing with love between the sexes, and will inveigh against any attempt, however honest, to endow with human frailties the exercise of this lofty power. To such a one Paradise has already opened its gates ; the flowers of immortal springtime are blooming. Let us hope that no blighting influence may ever come to 148 LOVE. darken the pathway, that the incidents of time and change and frailty may never throw a cloud over the radiance of such love, nor raise the ghost of monotony. If this be so, it will differ from ordinary experience, and it will partake of all the characteristics of true and eternal love. The true aim of all thinking, of all striving, and of all knowledge is spiritual life. The great concern of man is the destiny of the immortal soul. The world lacks not those whose business it is to expound religion which is to achieve all this. The greatest difficulty, however, that most persons experience is to get from the arbitrary tenets of theology a plain and simple method of entering the king- dom of heaven. The aim and purpose of this book is to unfold an easy and attractive way of securing true spiritual life. It is by the agency of Love. LOVE'S CRUCIBLE. A POSTSCRIPT. Since this little book was written and in the hands of the publishers, an incident of a personal character has occurred which has put to a severe test the theories and principles therein stated. Death for the first time, and after more than twenty years of married life, has entered our household and taken away our eldest daughter, almost fourteen years of age. Those who have passed through this ordeal will know and appreciate that the death of a child is among the keenest and bitterest forms of sorrow. The incidents are so fresh, and loom up in such over-shadowing proportions, that the temptation is to say more than strict taste would sanction. No detail seems unimportant in those trying days which precede the death of a loved one. This I must be permitted to say : our Frances was a child of beautiful character, of 149 ISO LOVE. intense activity, full of life and hope, and alive with plans and prospects for the future. She was withal so keenly sensitive that she naturally awakened interest and inspired affection. To me she was all the world — a constant source of joy. Her presence was always soothing and contenting. I never saw her, even at a distance, but it gave a thrill of pleasure, and in the later years, as she expanded in intelligence, there grew between us a strong and beautiful bond of sympathy. It meant unfaltering faith and perfect love. Never had the thought of her being taken away from me occurred as a possibility. I car- ried her closely and tenderly into all plans of the future. When, therefore, dangerous illness came it was a stunning blow which seemed to scorn consolation. Even the prospect of having this child removed from fellowship with my life appeared an inconsolable horror. One morning my wife and I, w' lot permitted to witness the cru-^' ti ast scene, in an anguish of susp >e, wa ,d foi the love's crucible. 151 terrible words, which at last came, ** It is all over." Here was the trial of faith. Here was the test of the power of Love 1 " It is all over." What did these words mean ? In my agony — the agony which crowns the tearing asunder forever of hearts that love — I had no rebellious thought. My heart said : " It is all right — it is done for the best. My darling is better off. She will have a richer, fuller life in that better, wider, and happier land to which her fair soul has flown." Was this a resignation born of the intellect ? We have heard the story told so often — we have repeated to ourselves the formula so many times, that we come to accept it as an axiom. But, let me confess it, while the tears were flowing, and the heart was bleeding, and love was griev- ing, doubt began to take form in my mind. Immortality and a future life are easy to grasp as theories, and all the evidence that poor mortals are able to gather points with great force to that conclusion. But, when death has taken away a loved child and the soul is 152 LOVE. wrought to the highest pitch of grief, we want certainties. All that has been garnered of early teaching, all that has been engrained by thought and conviction, all that has been consecrated by Holy Writ, in that supreme moment, when a loved one has breathed the last sigh and death has compassed the awful parting, seems to fail in the presence of the impenetrable mystery of the future. My intellect said : " She has gone to a better world. God in his wisdom has taken her. She will have a larger and worthier scope for her unfulfilled hopes. I shall meet her again in the spirit world, and we may love and be happy." But the appalling doubt! Suppose there is no future life — that all ends in the cold and hopeless grave? Oh, yes, at that moment we yearn for certainties. If my darling, whose pres- ence was so much to me, whose absence was unappeasable grief, is actually no more, if that gloomy grave is the end, then where can I turn for consolation — where is the Angel of Hope to be found ? LOVE'S CRUCIBLE. 153 The priestly invocation directed me to the Bible. Forgive me, I am not irreverent, but I could not rest definitely on this. These beauti- ful words of Jesus Christ were reported by mortal men, and have been handed down through many*centuries with all the mutations which pertain to human affairs. God's greatest revelation has been engraved upon the heart and conscience of man — its fulness is sung in the yearnings of the human soul. Here I was, with every emotion stirreil to the utmost, face to face with this great and moment- ous problem — the greatest, at bottom, the only really great problem — that confronts a sentient mortal. At that moment it meant everything. The pathetic question whether anything really exists or moves or acts except that which we see and touch, or whether there is something higher and beyond ; whether I could look upon the sweet face of my loved child lying there calm in death with the cheerless and despairing conviction that this was the end, or with a radiant hope that all was well, and she was still 154 LOVE. living, still hovering near me with eyes which had already seen vistas of endless beauty which led up to the seat and throne of Love and Life. Many good persons will pity my doubts and reproach my inability to rely on the word of Holy Writ. God forbid that I should heedlessly cast doubt. All my thoughts and wishes were for comforting truths. *To my poor agonized heart it was needful to get to the core of the great mysteries of life and faith. In the beau- tiful words of In Memoriam : " I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs That slope thro' darkness up to God. I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope. And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope." Then I began to reason. I looked over the universe as spread out before my eyes ; I saw the world with its things animate and inani- mate ; I saw the sun, the moon and the stars performing their unerring functions ; I saw the I love's crucible. 155 i processes of nature moving by immutable law ; I saw man working out his commanding destiny, and growing with the ages in wisdom and power. And all these visible phenomena were acting by a clear purpose and design and under a control wise, harmonious and benefi- cent. In all nature I could not find one token of cruelty or caprice. Then I thought of the workings of the soul- mind, if you will. Each human life is a drama unspeakably pathetic. Who can fathom the hopes, the yearnings, the longings — most of them doomed to crushing disappointment in the compass of this life— which constitute the tragedy of a single human life? We catch glimpses of ideals which we cannot reach. We bow down in an agony of self-abasement, and lift our eyes longingly to something higher than our- selves whom we may worship. Amid the reek- ing, grovelling influences of the world we grasp the uplifting thought that there is something greater than self, something higher than this earth, and, inspired by this, we battle for the 156 LOVE. right, though bruised in the conflict, we struggle for the true, though we fall in the contest. We form beautiful images of what we would like to be — images more fair than we can hope to realize in this poor life, and, then, in touching faith, we dream of a far-off land where, if we are worthy and faithful to the end, we may have a chance to pursue our ideals and find the fulfil- ment of our dreams. We find the conquests and achievements of this life unsatisfactory, the little trappings of worldly power a pitiful mockery — dead sea fruit. We come at last by the work- ings of this soul to understand and feel, although no tongue can prove, that the only thing that gives enduring peace and satisfies the bursting impulses of our higher nature is the effacement, the trampling under foot of self, and the conse- cration of every energy and power to the welfare and uplifting of others. Then is poured into the soul the omnipotent and supreme influence of Love, an endowment so great, so sublime that the Maker of all things can conceive nothing higher. r- love's crucible. '57 Can it be possible that any Being would create men with such endowments, and fill them with such yearnings, only to mock them by the poor tragedy of this life, and decree that all the exalted impulses which opened up visions of immortality should end in the grave? With this thought came Peace. I saw the divine Master laying down his life for men and giving an undying example of sacrifice. Then, though stricken with grief, I came to see the transcendent power of Love. The soul that loveth cannot die. Love is the impulse which creates immortality. It is the destruction of the grain of wheat which, in the very act, gives life to the germ of immortality. When self dies, love is born, and love is immortality. Oh, brothers and sisters in this world of grief, what I have felt many of you have felt, and many will feel. The severing of human love is a bitter thing. With my unwavering faith in immortality, I still nurse the divine anguish of tears. Death, without the hope of another life, ^ 158 LOVE. is a dark and dreary object, the grave a name- less horror. But, with a serene apprehension of the essence of Love, death has no terrors, and there is no grave. It is part of a divine purpose, conceived, developed and perfected by infinite Love. THE END. ^Aj me- sion ors, rine by