The last Apostle spoke of Love—but was he not a little premature?—since Love is born from Faith, none other, and without Faith, Love is no better than a blinded God. For Love is tender and most fragile—the sweetest sensitive plant that ever grew, that needs care such as earth cannot give it, and when stricken by rude winds blowing from barren lands, droops down unneeded and unheeded—a silent, shattered, broken heart, even like Christ’s, whose fragments gathered by the angels form in that heavenly home the purest, strongest tie. Love is the last great prize, so sacred and so beautiful that none can fathom it. Why therefore should we lay sacrilegious fingers on its outer robe, and seek to drag and form within ourselves that which we cannot truly understand?
“Love one another,” the great Teacher said, “little children, little children.” And perhaps if that saying were locked up two hundred years, and the word sealed in the heart and never on the lip, it would in silent, restful darkness germinate, and break forth at last to do some good.
We say it after him like parrots, and prate about the beauty of his words, loading ourselves with sentiment, devoid of feeling, and then we go away. Do we love? Do we forgive? Not in the ordinary course of things. We live barren lives though we may have a dozen children, and rise no higher than the soil. But let once “Faith” break forth to take the place of hardened Creed, and the first little seed has been sown for good, because in the train of Faith Morality will follow—and what is it but the strong elementary ground of Love?
For, grasping at the highest, we lose the lowest, our surest stepping-stones to higher things—as if for heaven we needed no education, but jumped to it as children born with wings. What lie more fraudulent was e’er invented, braying the word of Love into the infant mind? As lief begin to teach the classics, and make them learn it at the age of five.
We teach the babies in our infant standards to pry into the agony of Christ. What do they understand about it? The hardest lesson we cram in at the beginning and say, “He suffered that for you and me.”
And one is sucking sweets, and one has got a marble, and some few good ones think they understand—and little know the error they have made.
Perhaps if we left Christ out of it, and let them find by instinct what they miss, we should have nobler men and purer women, learning by many a fall to ask for something higher than themselves and earth.
Were they but taught morality from the cradle, and trained to esteem their neighbour as themselves, the road to Christ would lead more purely onward, and He Himself would be the great reward.
But no, no, we are all so wise in our own pet religion; we “hem” and “haw” at this and that, our babies must be baptized so as they’ll go to heaven and must be introduced post haste to God for fear they get left out.
Surely the prayer of the serious mother for pure wisdom for herself and her child must far outweigh the formal genuflections and harsh screamings of the afflicted infant.