By nature we are creatures of suggestion. A hateful look, an ugly word, a spiteful sneer, a cruel blow, make us hateful and ugly and spiteful and cruel in turn. For the empty heart flashes back in resentment whatever attitude another's act suggests.
Meekness greets as a friend the just critic, and for unjust and unkind treatment makes allowance as due to the blindness or hardness or weakness of the pitiful person who has nothing better to give. Meekness makes the soft answer that turns away wrath, and treats one who wrongs us all the more gently. Thus the meekness of Love gives both power to possess our own souls in patience under all provocation, and power, not indeed to coerce the bodies of others, but to win the consent of their souls. "Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth."
Righteousness is something of which we can have no more and no less than we wish.
He who is good enough is not good at all, and never will be any better. For righteousness is right relation to others; and so long as there are things we can do to help others, its infinite task is unfinished. Yet though the goal ever advances and never comes within reach, aspiration is achievement; progress is attainment. If we could come to the end of our journey; if we could see the world's claims on us met, the deeds of which we are capable done, that moment would mark the death of our souls. Just because Love grows by loving and serving, and makes ever greater and greater demands, it prophesies there shall be forever and ever things to do that will make life worth while. "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled."
The depth of our sympathy for those below us in secular service and station measures our worth in the eyes of those spiritually higher than we.
Love is like a tree; if it is not to be scorched in the blaze of ambition and withered in the heat of competition, its roots of sympathy must go down as deep into the soil of the obscure and lowly lives on whose humble toil we depend as its branches spread into the upper air of social distinction and station.
Unless we have much sympathy for those who toil on the farm and on the sea, in the factory and the mine, behind the counter and the desk, in the kitchen and laundry, what we call courtesy in the drawing room, or charity on the platform, is hollow mockery and Pharisaic sham. "Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy."
In order for Love to shine through them there must be nothing else in our hearts.
Love demands everything or nothing. It refuses to dwell in quarters or halves of our souls. The least flaw of pride, greed, or lust is enough to make them opaque. Greed, lust, pride, hate, so blind our eyes to the real selves of others that we cannot see or treat them as they really are; that is, cannot love them. It reduces them to mere means and tools of our passions and pleasures; and one who so regards persons can never love either them or any person aright. Only the pure can see Love; for only the pure can experience that union of one's whole self with the whole self of others in which Love consists. "Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God."
Just so sure as we love two or more persons we shall do all in our power to keep them from hating each other.