AMONG PEOPLE who observe and think there is no question about love's being the greatest harmonizing principle known to man. The question is how to get people to use love in adjusting their discords. Where for a lifetime there has been continuous agitation for lawmaking and force as panaceas for the discords of humanity, the simple and easy methods of love seem childish and silly. The minds of reformers have as a rule been charged and surcharged with pictures of the unjust conditions in the world and their righteous indignation has often been excited to the boiling point. Their uppermost thought is how to outlaw or crush the oppressors. They fairly explode with indignation when love or some of its attributes is proposed as a remedy. This brings up the matter of the component parts of love, what the elements are that
constitute that very quiet and apparently powerless thing called love.
Paul says (I Cor. 13) that love is patience, kindness, generosity, contentment, modesty, goodness and good temper, truth, burden-bearing capacity, faith in everything, a hope for the happy outcome of everything, and never a thought of failure. These are some of the working parts of love, but not all. The fact is that love is fundamental in every activity of life, not only in the spiritual and mental but in the mechanical and physical as well.
Scientists describe gravitation as the force with which bodies attract each other. This definition holds good in the mental, in the physical, and for all we know, in the spiritual realm. So what the physicist calls gravitation is one of the activities of love. Withdraw for one instant the steady pull of love from mother earth and we, her children, would be plunged into the depths of space and darkness. We should remember this when we are tempted to think that no one loves us. The spiritually developed soul gives thought and attention to these apparently invisible yet powerful forces, and by repeated mental contacts it unifies spirit, soul, and body in the one Mind, which sustains and unifies all things.
It is through this process of unfolding love that great souls are developed. Men are not created great but with the capacity to become great. Many factors enter into soul growth, some minor and some major, but a soul never attains supermind
power without love. The reason why love is essential in a great soul is that love is the binding power, the factor so necessary to strengthening or fortifying the soul. Hate and antagonism are disintegrating, and they destroy the cohesion of the spiritual electrons and protons of which the soul is built.
There are metaphysicians who think that this earth is a temporary abiding place of the soul, a kind of kindergarten, where lessons are learned in a single lifetime that fit the soul at death to fly away to paradise or some beautiful place in the skies. This line of thought separates the soul from its source and builds a mental gulf between soul and body. The body is the precipitation of the soul or thinking part of man; if it has developed sensuality and separation, it must be redeemed by being unified with the soul, and this unification is accomplished through love. When like Jesus we have developed love for all things, even for our enemies, then the body and all its elements become plastic to thought and we have all power in heaven and in earth. The energy of light, through which creative Mind rules heaven and earth, is amenable to man when his mind of love synchronizes with creative Mind and he can say, "I and the Father are one." According to physicists, nature in all its forms is an electromagnetic "solution" in which the atoms spin like cannon balls about one another; that is, nothing is solid, as it seems to be, but everything floats in ethereal space, ready to fly about at the impulse
of a directive mind of superenergy such as that of Jesus. With this understanding we can see that Jesus was stating facts of superscience when He said to His disciples, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."
In his "Essay on Man" Pope must have had something akin to this combination of gravitation and love in mind when he wrote,
In us who are followers of Jesus in the regeneration, which engrafts upon the natural man the spiritual genius that causes him to develop superman power, it begins its work by inspiring us to do little things in love. From this doing grows larger capacities until we attain the full stature of the Christ man.
According to Revelations, Jesus said, "He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne."
We begin our overcoming by thought mastery. We begin to master thoughts of hate and force by first thinking and doing the little component acts that constitute love. Begin today to be a little more patient. Practice kindness. Be generous in thought and act. When you are tempted to lose your temper, say, "I have a good temper." Affirm your truthfulness
under all circumstances. If your burdens seem greater than you can bear, remember what Jesus said: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Develop spiritual faith by believing in spiritual forces capable of accomplishing for you the seemingly impossible. Affirm a propitious outcome for everything you plan or do, and never admit failure in anything.
"He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches."
