Love, the Law of Life

I become aware that the Good seeks its outlet for evolution within me. The Good is my God.

The man who will not believe that the Good is my God will not believe either that Love is my God.

I do not negate suffering. All pain has been given tome; but that does not afford me a reason for negating love. The love within me makes me more than conqueror of suffering.

I do not declare that death is not in me. Death solemnly lies there before my eyes. But I believe that the love which pierces through death has the greater power. Death is swallowed up by love. Love is stronger than death. Love tramples on death. I even think that death is transmuted through love into a kind of art. Death is but one phase of variation, while love is the whole. All things die for the sake of love, and live again for love’s sake. I know no reason why death for the sake of love should be dreaded.

I know that decrepitude really exists; but is not love more than able to make up for every lack? Love perennially rejuvenates. Although I must grow old and decay, I know that the love which outstrips me and runs before me will prepare for me a broader way. Hence I shall never stray.

I do not affirm that there is no disease in the world; yet I cannot deny the love that works within me. Love is more than conqueror of disease.

Love is all. Love alone is absolute. The grief of finiteness, the dirge of darkness, all are sanctioned by love. Love atones for all.

Who shall separate me from the love which is complete atonement, complete salvation? Shall affliction? or hardship? or persecution? or hunger? or nakedness? or danger? or the sword? I know that the Love and the Good which seek in me an outlet will give me the victory over all these. Therefore, though I suffer every hardship, I cannot deny the God who as Love works within me. For I believe that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor governments, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature—none of these things can separate - me from the indwelling love of God, who has taught me the way to love through hardships.

This is love too deep for me. It is the secret of the Absolute. Under the spell of this love, hardships, dis- asters, illnesses, even death, are all transmuted into arts. To illness, love bids the raising of the curtain; to hardship and disaster, love assigns the part of the dance; and to death, the closing of the curtain. Love is the creator of all. Love fears no evil. Love recreates all. Love is the final world salvator.

Love believes and teaches. Love is absolute refulgence, absolute life and resurrection. Love is God.” Therefore, he who has not tasted love does not know the God of salvation and resurrection. The Deity of reality is not as yet the God of salvation. The God of outer reality is not the God of the soul within. How can he who has not within himself love, the seed of God, ever grasp the truth of God as regeneration? These hypocrites who oppress the proletariat say that they love God. They probably declare that they know God, but in truth they do not know Him. God is love itself. In loveless folk God is not to be found, for God is naught but love. God as Law, God as the Ideal, God as the Philosophical Absolute, is not the power which saves me. The God who saves me is none other than Love. Love is not philosophy at all, and°God is not a theory. God is the Power of Life revealed in Love—the Effort of Cosmic Will which would lift all and save all. That alone which comprehends that God is Love is the Love which moves within me. Water pours forth only from the spring. Love alone understands love. God reveals Himself to me only when I will to love.

Apart from Love there is no revelation. Seek not for God in books, nor within the structure of matter. God is, indeed, not to be sought for: He is to be loved. God is revealed only in Love. He who would hear the Voice of God should love. Where love is richest, God is best known. |

Therefore, in the cities of capitalism God is naturally despised; and the malcontents rebelling against capitalism fail, of course, to recognize God. But he who believes in the inner power, who is conscious of the reconstruction of the cosmos through Goodness and Love, believes in God. His belief, then, may not be half-hearted: he is confident that without Love there is no victory.

I fear that in this world God, this God of Love, will not be fully known; but I do think that ultimately all Love awakes from within. Love will arouse all men. Love whispers in that man’s ear; it whispers to this man’s heart. Love calls to all to awake, and goes about bringing all men to the comprehension that through Love all things are transmuted into life-art. To this Love, all creation is adornment, and withal, intrinsically perfect drama. Love is the drama that redeems pain and disaster. To Love, all is victory. Love is Alpha and Omega—the very essence of God.

Love is God’s Holy of Holies. I know that in Love alone God is to be adored. To me every idol, every temple, is but a symbol. In Love only do I worship God. Allformsare but appendages. Temples, shrines, churches, creeds, baptism, the holy communion, the Scriptures, the hymns—all of these circle about Love. They are not God. Love alone is salvation. Love is the final iconoclast.

Only in the Temple of Love do I worship God. In groups of workingmen, at the bedside in the quarantine hospital where the nurses are bravely at work, in the dimpled cheeks of babies, in the embrace of the loved one, I worship God. Let all fragmental forms be dissevered from God.;

Love alone introduces God tome. Love is my sanctuary—in factory, field, city street; in bedroom, office, kitchen, sickroom. I have my sanctuary everywhere I go in the universe. Where Love is, there God is.

He who worships God in Love is never straitened. ~ Love is the unfailing spring.

No sects there are in Love. Buddhist, Mohammedan, Christian—these are not Love’s divisions. Love knows how to embrace, but not to differentiate.

Love removes all the dross from man, and saves all. Love is the ultimate religion. Classify me not by creed: I belong to nothing but Love. Jesus it was who taught that it should be so. Jesus never said that men were to be shunned for their creeds. Love is the ultimate revelation, the final sanctuary.

Only before Love do I bow in reverence.

Eternal Love, flow forth! O God within me, clothe Thyself in glory!

Now does the world meet its famine of Love. Naught there is to save it but Love. When the stream of Love dries up, society disintegrates and all things lose balance. When, in the home, the factory, the field, the bank, love evaporates, existence even becomes a target for curses.

Eternal Love, pour forth! Thou within me, well up! The spring of Love flows only within the spirit. God is perennially the Indwelling One, Eternal Love.

When this Inner Power is dynamic, it becomes eruptive, revolutionary. This revolution of the Indwelling One may not be controlled by external rules. The revolution for Love is the most potent of revolutions. All revolutions heretofore, compared to the revolution of the Inner Power, are but as trivial games. The Divine Revolution of Love knows nothing to dread.

O revolution of Love, make ready within! Universat Love, prepare! For the courage of Love must vanquish all that is vicious. Love alone knows justice; Love is the last Arbiter. Prepare ye the way for Love, for our God goes out to battle!

When thou mournest, remember the God of Love; when thou weepest for thy sins, think of the atonement through the God of Love! On the verge of death, trust all to the Hand of Love! In the day when Justice is trampled down, in the day of weeping in patience, in the morn of poverty, in the eve of loss of employment, thou mayest conquer only by inner Love!

Hang not thy head, O Comrade, creation of my soul! Before thee are placed the flowers of Love’s sacrifice! Shall we not, together, thou and I, through Love see the selfsame God!

Love in its arms enfolds all. Love is my Holy of Holies. Through Love I ascend to the heights and descend to the depths. Love isall-pervading. Love leads man into the innermost shrine of reality. Love is the only eye that visions God. With this wonderful eye of Love, God and man behold one another. In Love, the eye of man becomes the eye of God. In Love is first achieved the interfusion of Divinity and humanity.