1.J 01. What is Love?
What is Love?
I think it is extremely difficult to give any definition of it. We may point to some men and say they come nearer to it, as exemplars, than others.
It is not so much a faculty, or power, as it is a certain condition of the whole spirit, made up of the contribution of several different elements of the mind”, having relations to things superior and to things inferior. It is the religious principle, which, when you have it as the ground and root of your ministry, includes, primarily, love to God. And by the term “God” we understand whatever is conceived of as superhuman in excellence and in wisdom. God is infinite. No man can crystallize God. If he does, his God becomes an idol not bigger than the man.
God is infinite and formless. When he is really thought of, it is by the contribution of some of the highest and best of human qualities, out of which and over which something flames up before the imagination that is higher than the reach of human experience. The germ may have been derived from observation or experience, but we recompose these nobler attributes of the soul, clothe them with form, and call that God, knowing all the time that we cannot measure him, but that this process of thought and feeling reveals and inspires in us some sense of that quality which we mean when we speak of the divine attributes. But the true sense of God does not stop there. It includes the feeling of love to wards this divine being, which is spoken of in the New Testament, and the most glorious choral and symphony of which lies in the thirteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians. Such a love embraces all that is human, all creatures who have the power of being happy or miserable, and it has a yearning sympathy and desire for their good. It includes, also, a nearness, a sweetness, and a desire towards men, not so much that they should love us, for that is confined more nearly to the reciprocating passions of men, friendship, for instance, which is a specialty under this generic head, and is a part of it, though essentially it involves an element of self. But the charity, or love, of the New Testament is the going out of thought, of feeling, and of sympathy towards others, and towards whatever can receive benefit from us.
It is the state of the Creator, and I suppose that it is the state of those most like him, who dwell close to him. It is the wish that whatever we are thinking of, or saying, or doing, may make some one better and happier. It is genial. It ought to be full of cheer, courage, hope, and it is full of bounty and blessings. It means happiness, and as happiness is greater in proportion as it rises from the lower range of susceptibilities to the higher moral qualities, those who desire to confer happiness intelligently will do so by making men capable of being happy; that is, by enriching and developing their higher nature.