CHAPTER XIII LOVE IS THE ELECTRIC LAW OF LIFE: ALL THAT LIVE MUST COME FROM LOVING
God is love, and love is the law of life and the creative force of the universe. The love of God in the soul is the substance and life of all religion. The love of fellow-man in the heart is the foundation of all human kindness and social ethics. As Dante followed his beloved Beatrice from world to world until he found her at the gates of Paradise, so we must follow our loves and ideals through all the tragic incidents of existence until we find them as guardian angels at the gates of celestial glory and creative perfection.
A noble character, a worthy and useful life of service to others is the chief purpose and crowning glory of all earthly existence. Wealth and fame are mere incidents in the fleeting drama of human experience.
All true greatness is in the beauty and grandeur of the soul. It must come from within; external manifestations may shadow it forth, but cannot produce it.
All true gentleness and kindness are a reflex of the inner life of love and willing service. We live in the atmosphere that our thoughts and spirits breathe around us, and by opening the windows and doors of our soul to love we inhale the perfume from other souls, and the breath of life from Deity Himself.
Thoughts are forces, and through them we have creative power; but they must be winged with love to manifest divine energy. Every act is preceded and given birth to by a thought, the act repeated forms the habit, the habit determines the character, and character determines the life and destiny.
Everything in the material universe has its origin first in the spiritual concept or thought, and from this it takes its form. The spoken word and the mighty deed spring from the potency of living thought, and life is a tireless swimmer in an ocean of thought. Thought is the conscious energy of the soul, the subtle, invisible force of the reasoning, resistless mind, and, to be potent with life, must be winged with love. Thought is everywhere and surrounds us like the atmosphere we breathe. When we want a thought we should reach up into the air for it with the caressing hand of love, and it will come like an invisible messenger from spirit land. We should seek thought and wisdom in the intellectual zenith of our own minds, and not from mediums or clairvoyants, for they have never revealed any great truths.
Thus our great poets, sages and prophets have reached up into the spiritual altitudes and gathered wisdom and truth as the stars are gathered and sparkle in the glittering mirror of night's far off and measureless spaces. They come with the speed of light from all suns and spheres in the jewelled crown of God's eternal expanse of love and life, they whisper wonderful things to the listening spirit in the silent chambers of the dreaming soul, and they come like angel faces in the visions of night and paint with the flaming finger of anticipated joy the glorious beatitudes of immortality and love. There is the science of thought which brings wisdom and success, and the science of love that brings peace and joy. It is a beautiful thing to live. Life is the fine art of the soul, the literature of the spirit, where it writes its hopes and achievements.