LOVE AS A SIDING
With our differing hereditary traits, educations, experience, and ways of living and thinking, it is quite impossible that there should not be collisions with those with whom we are living or working. We are like a number of trains trying to go in different directions on the same track. Congestions are certain to come, but a congestion need not degenerate into a collision and a wreck if we will remember that there are plenty of sidings. Now a “siding” is a sort of abbreviated second track whereby trains going in opposite directions may pass each other in safety. In material railways they bear various names; on the invisible pathway of life they are all called love. Sometimes they are nicknamed forbearance, tolerance, patience, or common sense; but these are all translations of the same thing. So in case of danger, remember the sidings.—James M. Stifler, “The Fighting Saint.”
(1905)
Love Compared—See [Christ’s Love].
LOVE, CONQUESTS OF
There is a story told
In Eastern tents, when autumn nights grow cold
And round the fire the Mongol shepherds sit
With grave responses listening unto it:
Once, on the errands of his mercy bent,