Love! what things are wrapped up in this word. Joy is love exulting. Peace is love in repose. Long suffering is love untiring. Gentleness is love enduring. Temperance is love in training. Meekness is love under discipline. Goodness is love in action. Therefore my boy be loving, for “not to know love is not to live.”
—C. C. Cissell.
It has been well said that the three elements of manliness are love, principle and courage. Every boy knows that without the two latter he cannot succeed. But boys are too apt to think that to “be loving” belongs to girls. Analyze a great man’s character and you will find love is the main-spring of his action. To be loving and lovable will give him a stamp which will pass current the world over.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Be Loving
It is related of the Apostle John that when old and feeble he was borne by his disciples to the House of God, where, spreading his hands, he addressed the people again and again: “Love one another.” (1 John 4:7). When asked why he repeated it so often, he answered: “Because there is nothing else, attain that and you have enough.”
Love is the greatest thing in the world, the pivot on which the commandments turn, the pillar of the Christian religion and the keystone in the arch of our salvation. It is a height without top, depth without bottom, and length and breadth without boundary. It will not yield to bribes or threats, cannot be burnt by fire, submerged by billows or restrained by castle bars, but shines in patriotism, bleeds in sacrifice and dies in atonement.
To define love is impossible. It cannot be framed in sentences. Language is inadequate to express the feelings prompted by it. No philosopher can explain its whens, whys and wherefores. No geologist can unearth its footprints. No rhetorician can find a fit garb to clothe it. Artists cannot sketch it, scribes cannot pen it, nor can death destroy it.
THE LAW OF LOVE, THE RULE OF LIFE.
Love is a social virtue, “the soul of life.” It is the underlying principle of voluntary associations and is the governing force of action. In its relation to etiquette it is courtesy, “Love doth not behave itself unseemly.” (1 Cor. 13:5). Politeness has been defined as love in trifles, courtesy as love in little things. In social standing it is another word for a real gentleman. “Gentleman” has been defined as a man who does things gently, with love. In its relation to God it is self-sacrifice. “To be great-hearted, for the love we bear to our Master, and in imitation of Him, is ideal Christianity, for it is the religion of Him whose life and death were self-sacrifice.” Such love lightens the burdens of other lives, sweetens their toils and imparts music with every step. Such love begets love. It knows no discouragements and what it does is done gratuitously. To love thus is to live. Said Phillips Brooks, “Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.”