Article September 26, 1903 Issue

The Effort to Love

SAMUEL GREENWOOD.

Love is the "tireless topic" of the world, the theme of song and story; but that is not always love which takes its name. Mortals, in their belief, have invested it with a material nature, and confined its realization to a personal, corporeal sense. It has thus become to them a possible blessing or curse, a heaven or a hell. This false conception of the real essence and operation of love, this submergence of the God-like in animality, has wrought fearful havoc upon the peace and happiness of mankind. A higher standard and a truer estimate of love as spiritual quality and procurement, would go far towards redeeming the race from its morbid tastes and low moral tone.

The alienation of humankind from this spiritual sense of love with its unselfish and unrestricted activities, has marked the degree of mortal's debasement into the unlikeness of all that man was made to represent. With this departure from the God-like intercourse of brotherly sympathy and love, the need began for a religion that would lead men back to that divine, spiritual state wherein Love is supreme, and all men are brethren. This need has found expression in a multiplicity of religious beliefs, but that one is always nearest right which has most of good in it and which inspires its believers with the greatest love and good-will. The fierce activity of wicked passions in human nature is lamentable evidence either of the imperfect nature of past religions, or of mortals' neglect to climb by the ladders let down to them.

When Jesus was teaching, and so founding Christianity, he laid especial emphasis upon the need of loving; even to the extent that without it, it is impossible to be an acceptable Christian; and St. John makes brotherly love a criterion by which Christians might be known. The importance of Christian loving cannot be over-estimated, for it is the vitality of all religion and ethics.

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