Chapter X.

       Love As A Tonic

       Table of Contents

      All through the Bible are passages which show that love is a health-tonic, and actually lengthens life.

      “With long life will I satisfy him,” says the Psalmist, “because he hath set his love upon me.” Love is harmony, and harmony prolongs life, as fear, jealousy, envy, friction, and discord shorten it.

      Who has not seen the magic power of love in transforming rough, uncouth men into refined and devoted husbands!

      There is no doubt that those who are filled with the spirit of love, which is the Christ spirit,—whose sympathies and tenderness are not confined to their immediate relatives and friends, but reach out to every member of the human family,—live longer and are more exempt from the ills of mankind than the selfish and pessimistic, who, centered in themselves, lose their better part of life, the joy and the strength that come from giving themselves to others.

      The power of love is often illustrated in a delicate mother who walks the floor, night after night, whose days pass without recreation or change, week in and week out, and who feels more than compensated if she can only procure relief for her suffering little one.

      In no other way than through the marvelous power of love can we account for the wonderful miracles of endurance presented by many mothers in bringing up large families. Think of a mother carrying about, perhaps for the greater part of a day and the night following, the same weight, in merchandise or other matter, as that of a sick child! She could not stand the strain. She would be ill in a short time. But love lightens her load and makes self-sacrifice a pleasure. She can bear any burden, even poverty, disappointment, or suffering, for the sake of the loved one. This sublimely unselfish moth-er-love is a prototype of the most exalted creative love that enraptures the universe, that invites us to be partakers and dispensers of this world-tonic, this great panacea for all of the ills of mankind.

      “The situation that has not its duty, its ideal,” says Carlyle, “was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy ideal; work it out therefrom, and, working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the ideal is in thyself.”

      Not on some far-off height, in some distant scene, or fabled land, where longing without endeavor is magically satisfied, will we carve out the ideal that haunts our souls, but near at hand.

      In the humble valley, on the boundless prairie, on the farm, on sea or on land, in workshop, store, or office, wherever there is honest work for the hand and brain of man to do,—within the circumscribed limits of our daily duties is the field wherein our ideal must be wrought.

      Wrapped up in every human being there are energies which, if unfolded, concentrated, and given proper direction, will develop the ideal.

      Our very longings are creative principles, indicative of potencies equal to the task of actual achievement. These latent potencies are not given to mock us. There are no sealed orders wrapped within the brain without the accompanying ability to execute them.

      If the emancipation proclamation is written in your blood, if it is indicated in the very texture of your being, you will have within you—undeveloped, it may be, but always there,—strength to break the fetters that bind you, power to triumph over the environment which hampers you.

      No external means alone, however, will accomplish this. You must lay hold of eternal principles, of the everlasting verities, or you never can accomplish what you were sent into the world to do. You never can reach the goal of your highest possibilities until you believe in your God-given power to do so, until you are convinced that you are master of your will, and that the Creator has endowed you with strength to bend circumstances to aid you in the realization of your vision.

      Our energies must not be allowed to run to waste in longing without action. Our latent strength must be developed steadily and persistently. All our reserves must be utilized, all our powers concentrated and wisely directed toward the accomplishment of the work we have marked out for ourselves.

      With eyes ever fixed on the ideal, we must work with heart and hand and brain; with a faith that never grows dim, with a resolution that never wavers, with a patience that is akin to genius, we must persevere unto the end; for, as we advance, our ideal as steadily moves upward.

      Everywhere we see people starving for love, famishing for affection, for some one to appreciate them.

      On every hand we see men and women possessing material comfort, luxury, all that can contribute to their physical well-being—who are able to gratify almost any wish—and yet they are hungry for love. They seem to have plenty of everything but affection. They have lands and houses, automobiles, yachts, horses, money—everything but love!

      Much of what goes by the name of love is only selfishness. Until love extends beyond the narrow circle of relatives and friends; until it stretches beyond the shores of one’s own land, it is not real love. The Christ-love is not that which nourishes and cares with greatest solicitude for one’s own child, and yet turns a deaf ear to the cry of the hungry and forsaken one in the street. Pure love is in the act, and does not take note of the object.

      When Elizabeth Fry visited Newgate Prison, in London, where the women were packed in one room like cattle, without the slightest attention to sanitation, she was much interested in a girl who had committed a terrible crime. One of the London ladies engaged in philanthropic work asked her what crime this girl had committed. “I do not know,” she replied. “I never asked her.”

      All she wanted to know was that this poor unfortunate had made a mistake, and that she needed love to heal the wound and help her to reform. It was not the wind or tempest the girl wanted, but the warm, gentle sunlight.

      I do not believe there is any human being, in prison or out, so depraved, so low, so bad, but that there is somebody in the world who could control him perfectly by love, by kindness, by patience.

      I have known women who had such charm of manner, such great loving, helpful hearts, that the worst men, the most hardened characters, would do anything in the world for them—would give up their lives, even, to protect them. But they could never be reformed, could never be touched by hatred or unkindness or compulsion. Love is the only power that could reach them.

      There is a man in New York City who has served, at different times, twenty-five years in state prison. He was one of the most hardened of criminals. No sooner would he get out of prison than he would begin to plan some burglary which would send him back again. The police all knew him.

      A great many people tried to help him, and many a time he got a position, only to lose it, because some one who knew him circulated the report that he was an ex-convict.

      He happened to fall under the influence of one of these sweet and noble women, who did not ask him what he was sent to prison for or to describe the crimes he had committed. She did not want to have anything to do with the bad part of him. She wanted to forget all that, and wanted him to forget it, too. She told him that he was not made for such business, that the Creator had given him that marvelously strong, keen brain of his for a great and noble purpose; that he was a success and happiness machine, so fearfully and wonderfully wrought that it had taken the Creator a quarter of a century to bring it to its perfection; that success and happiness were his birthright; that all he had to do was to claim them; that he had no right to look upon himself as a debased creature, but that he should hold perpetually in mind the