Editorial January 22, 1903 Issue

Love's Supremacy

SOME of us will recall the keen and sympathetic interest with which we looked at the painting called "Breaking Home Ties," by Thomas Hovenden, which was exhibited at the World's Fair. It represents a scene in the living room of a country home at the moment when an older son and brother is taking his leave to enter upon the untried paths of city life. The young fellow is standing in the foreground and is looking into the sad and solicitous face of his mother, whose hand rests tenderly upon his shoulder while she speaks a last word of loving counsel, admonition, and encouragement.

It is possible to find in the lad's face the suggestion of an assumed self-confidence, if not something of purposeful resistance to an appeal which is bringing an unwonted throb to his heart and tremor to his voice; but we all know that, deep within, he is pledging unfailing loyalty to all that will fulfil his mother's hope and gladden her heart, and that in the temptations and trials of the years to come, the remembrance of that tear-stained face will be more to him than all else, for the mother-love is the potent and inspiring factor of his life. In weakness it will be his strength, in discouragement his support, in sorrow his solace, until he come to apprehend, as he has not as yet, that this is Love's reflection, the essential of humanity.

The true sense of Love may be but vague and indefinite for us all until, through its revelation in human experience as a guiding, supporting, and impelling presence, we realize that it is the strength of the weak, the courage of the timid, the assertion of the irresolute, the persistence of the unstable, the joy of the grieving. Thus in some degree is its sufficiency disclosed and we begin to understand that the essence of our awakening life is indeed "the substance of things hoped for,"—divine Love. In experience which has already come to some of us, the young man must breast many a mad current, and sometimes his feet will well-nigh have slipped, but in the hour of his besetment, his mother's face is seen, her loving hand is felt again, and he is himself once more, and knows that love has more than conquered.

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