ness of Love's name has been; but pure as the archangels, of which indeed it is the chief and lord, stands Love the subduer, the blesser, the refiner, the chastener!

From the stillness of the Past comes an echoing of a truth, which in the midst of all executions of a righteous wrath, and the work of a just judgment, still wings its way round the world, penetrating every soul at whose door its mysterious knocking' is heard, GOD is love.' Oh, would that these souls might stand forth unabashed in the purity of the light cast from the throne, and send up an answering cry, significant of the accomplishment of redemption's work: man is love! And what is love? With a dear friend I might reply: Nothing beyond a dictionary has ever pretended to answer,' satisfactorily. And can a dictionary tell to the panting, thirsting soul, what is love? No! Properly, there can be to every man but one answer to this interrogation: the voice in the heart. Over its troubled chaos God breathes, and the voice is born; then arises in the inner man a consciousness that needeth no interpreter, and we stand up enlightened gloriously; and looking no longer with blinded eyes on one another, we know as we have never known before. Heart answers to heart;" and surely, if ever a glad song is hymned among the angels, it is in such hours of soul recognition and union among those who erst labored under, and bore wearily the curse of sin estrangement.

I would not call love that ephemeral thing which a word or a glance can breathe into existence; there exists not among human beings any such creative power, which a word or a look can wound mortally and destroy utterly. Human beings are not empowered to thus annihilate spiritual agencies. Neither can love be that passion which exalts a mortal to the high throne in the affections, which is consecrate from the beginning by a divine law to Deity alone; which nothing but Deity can inhabit, save by usurpation. Least of all can be called love that sensual desire whose gratification implies wretched degradation of soul, abandonment of moral principle, transgression and abasement of the immutable laws of virtue and rectitude.

It is certainly inconceivable that the idea of this divinity in man, conveyed in the scriptural declaration, 'GOD is love,' will admit of any such definitions. Neither is it to be believed that the Apostle's entreaty, let us love one another,' was an idle, a meaningless entreaty. The missionaries of JESUS were not wont to utter vain precepts. There was a solemn significance in all the lessons of duty to which their lips gave utterance. If, therefore, GoD is love, and love is solemnly commended to us, must it not of necessity be a pure, a holy sentiment; one that will always exalt and ennoble, and never debase? Must it not be the spirit which makes a heaven of the soul that receives it? Must not this capacity to love be the crowning happiness; the crowning distinction and honor of humanity? And may not that mortal who does verily and indeed love, be said to 'entertain an angel,' though, Oh blessed thought! not unawares?'

Numberless have been the advocates of love since its first sublime manifestation in the work of creation. GOD, the FATHER, the life of love, has given into the hands of all his Apostles credentials, by which

the whole world may know that they are commissioned. Our SAVIOUR bore upon himself the cross of love. Its thorny crown was laid upon his brow by a people who mocked at the name.

In all the relations of

life which he sustained, as a child, a son, a friend, a teacher, a redeemer, how eminently did this soul of his being, this divinity within him, shine forth!

The sacred missionaries who waited on his path, who learned of him what a high, what a glorious work was theirs, to make known to all men the love of God to man! Their virtues did not die away with them; their work was not ended when the Evangelist was laid in the grave. When their hands fell from the plough, there were others to advance, glad to bear the cross, dispising the shame, so they might only make known more universally that greater than riches, than power, than glory, was the love with which CHRIST loved us!

Oh men! Oh women! to whom these tidings of great joy have come, to you, even as unto those chosen fishermen of Galilee, is the word, which surely needs no interpretation given: 'Go and tell of love!"'

But preach it not with words, not with words only, or principally. One deed of self-forgetfulness, one act of charity, one smile of encouragement, one effort to uplift the morally degraded, one whisper in the ear of the lonely, forsaken penitent, oh, in the hearts of men and in the eye of Heaven such outgoings of thy love will be more acceptable than a thousand sounding words. Chiefly by deeds, among us who live so much by sight, will the Holy Presence be recognised.

So often profaned has been this everlasting GOD-word' by association of deed and thought, so often debased by connection with unworthy acts has been this effulgence of Almightiness, that to many minds it has lost its elevated, true meaning. So outraged by application has the very name been, that multitudes, heart-sick with the alluring, deceiving mirage of the desert, have sent up a scoff and a mocking laugh when they have heard the word 'love' taken reverentially upon the lip! God knows, in the connections and dependencies of life we have need to believe with a never-questioning faith in the reality of this! If love be not our Bethlehem-star to guide, we are indeed miserable; we shall be lost in the darkness !

There is something beautiful and inexpressibly touching in the affections manifested, not so much uttered, perhaps, as looked and acted, in the devotion of the very young to those on whose care they depend; in whom they see no fault, in whom, to their understanding, is embodied the glorious idea of perfectness. But no less beautiful, and far more touching, is the love which binds together elder beings; those in the noon-day of life, who, having survived, struggled with and conquered the sickening sense of disappointment which every mortal feels on first awaking to the conviction that their idols are of clay, return again with attachment which is strengthened by the trial of enlightenment; return to love, despite all follies, faults and sins; return to love, with a hopeful and forbearing tenderness, conscious of similar follies, faults and sins, strong to bear with, mighty to love! Such beings having so awakened, having so returned to the wiser, more sentient affec

tion, are prepared for self-sacrifice, for self-immolation, for a lofty and full development of the Divinity within!

I but echo the words of another in saying: 'It seems as though the truest love could never be satisfied with any thing less than GOD!" He who has known the deep, abiding, full satisfaction which fills the soul that has struggled for God's blessing with agony and with tears, and which has at last obtained that blessing, is prepared, and no other preparation is needed, to arise and go forth and bless in turn, in whatever way it is possible for him to bless. Not within the circle of his own dear household will the affections of such a one centre; not at the altar of his own particular church will his great offering be laid; not within the borders of the country of his birth will his affections be limited; not alone around those of his own hue will the arms of his divinity be laid; oh, no! from his warm heart prayers will ascend for all the dwellers upon earth; at the door of a common humanity his love will knock for entrance; he will know no distinctions of rank or station; he will acknowledge no degradation but that of vice; will see no glory but that of moral, spiritual excellence. Such a man, with sympathies which know no limitation, will be conscious of a love that is worthy its heavenly origin; such a being will live a truly glorious life; such a one can alone be said to truly live.

The affection which binds together man and woman as husband and wife is, when found in healthful existence, a sacred affection. Such an alliance between souls bound toward eternity is holy: the pearl which gems the brow of those so united is of exceeding great price.

The mass of earth's inhabitants is preeminently fitted for sustaining such relations. The marriage-covenant was instituted by the ALMIGHTY, When we behold such countless shipwrecks of their peace who thus bind themselves together, the question will arise: Is this sacrament of marriage rightly understood? Is it wisely partaken by those who thus set the seal to their earthly unhappiness? The heart grows faint with the thought of the profanation offered unto Love by the too common manner of fulfilling the marriage vows. The continual jarring discord, the passion, the disappointment, the coldness and estrangement, among those on whom GOD's blessing is sought when they are joined together; the frequent divorces, desertions, and worse desecrations of the laws of virtue, as existing now so palpably among many of the wedded, is cause enough for our pausing to contemplate this phase of Love's development; cause enough for forcing every man and woman to bethink what are the motives which should, and the motives which do, unite them.

With those marriages whose propriety is suggested by the whispers of self-interest, we have nothing to do. They who dare vow to 'love," honor and obey,' to cherish, comfort and support,' know of course, when they make these vows, that they speak falsely; that they never will fulfil more than the letter of the law, mayhap not even that. Such may look for happiness in their union, and it is not astonishing if they find such as they seek. In advancing their fortunes, in securing a better position in the world, in having a husband, in sporting a wife,' in

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making a 'capital match,' they find their cause and source of joy. Of these we have naught to say they themselves would probably never think of asserting that love was the foundation of union. Love being to their apprehension such a mere dead-letter, they would seek for more expressive language wherewith to make known the reasonable causes for union among mortals.

Question the girl not yet quite released from school duties, whose eyes are fixed with longing on the future, to whom the real things of life are all rose-hued and purple; ask her, What is love?' — and there will be a flushing of her young face, and a warmer rush to her heart, and a tumultuous beating there, which tell that she has had sweet dreams of the existence, if she does not really know, of the divinity within her. Self-sacrifice, self-forgetfulness, enters largely into her ideas of this love. What would she not do, what would she not dare and bear, for the Ideal; for him whom, of all the hosts Imagination draws around her, she loves only, wholly, truly? When she goes into the world — the world, to her vision, so overflowing with light and love and beauty-what meets her, who treads on air, the sunlight of heaven's smile making bright her way, the soft melody of angel-songs breathing through her soul? Perhaps the dream of her girlhood transforms itself into a living, glorious reality. One may meet her there to take her by the hand and lead her through the paths of life. He is the very personation of her ideal; she bows to him, yields to him, gives him her heart, with its wealth of tenderness,' sees through a glass darkly all his imperfections, moral, natural, and mental. There is no room then in her mind for any thought but of him. Her prayers are fraught with but one name; she lives but in his life. Oh, happiest of dreamers! most miserable of awakeners!

When the passion which mortal strength cannot long endure passes, it may not be in years, it may be early, yet too late, there is left a void, a gloom, a chaos in her heart, which tells how terribly is visited on the Human the sin of robing wholly with earthly garments the Divine!

Who will doubt, that knows of human life as it is, that a strong, deep, human love is needed to bear the spirit up in trial, suffering and loss: but it is not this absorbing passion that will answer; too essentially human is it, to endure.

I have in my mind's eye two beings, of whose divorces the world will never hear; of whose domestic wretchedness, of whose heartdisappointment, no ear will ever be pained with the hearing. Beautitiful, though very different, illustrations do they afford of the divinity which is revealed in every true development of the love which mortals bear toward one another. The one, in the perfect loveliness of her womanhood, bowed her heart to another heart as lofty and as noble as her own, and there was the strength and duration of eternity in the tie which bound them together. Natural beauty was not the attractive power; more exalted position in society was not what either sought; increase of fortune, of worldly wealth, was not the cementing power which erected them, a wall of strength, against which the world must battle vainly ever. The virtue, the religion in the heart of each; the calm trust in the mercy of GoD; aspirations after perfection; sorrow

for the sin and corruption which reign among men ; deep and abiding hope and faith in the mercy with which HEAVEN regards His children of the earth, were the habits of mind, mutually perceived, which drew them together. Faith in the great capacities of moral and mental development in morals, a deep and cordial respect for each other's character, which finally merged into a pure and steadfast love; these were the causes of their union. The way of these twain is in the world, among the worldly; but gladness and sunshine is in the woman's heart, and she will never bow to the false gods of earth; and this man, uncorrupted, undefiled by the temptations which assail, will, by the help of the God through whom he lives and moves, remain through life ' unspotted from the world.' God's blessing rest forever upon them! There is another, around whose early life was thrown little of romance, or the visible forms of beauty. From childhood her soul was athirst; but though it was her lot to dwell in an isolated land where no water is,' the kindly dews of heaven fell upon and strengthened her. Looking with weary eyes around her, even in early life she saw nothing that could satisfy the cravings of her spirit; and from the unsatisfying things that were seen, to the eternal beauty of the unseen, yet not dimly-guessed-of beyond, she turned.

GOD, the strength of love, heard her patient supplications, her cry of faith, and He was very gracious unto her. Then did she forget the loneliness, the gloom, the want of sympathy; there sprang up a fountain that proved unfailing in the desert; a beautiful oäsis was discovered even there, and in the pleasant shade of palm-trees sat she down

to rest.

her

In after years a broader meaning of the 'GoD-word' burst upon happy heart; a new light flooded all former conceptions of the true Life of life. She married; and there was a truth, a reflex of the immortal virtue which is destined to outlive this mortal life, in her assenting word. There was a promise of firm affection, of pure devotion, beautiful as that manifest in the choice of Ruth; in her, when she said to her beloved, Where thou goest I will go; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my GOD.' And she went forth with him in the paths of a new life, knowing that she must bear and endure, that she must meet the storm as well as the sunshine, and that weeds and tares would grow and blossom among the flowers which would bloom for The duty devolving upon woman will she ever nobly fulfil, her spirit acknowledging, while it clings to the earthly, that in GoD alone the loftiest love finds its full satisfaction; that in heaven only the heart can truly know of that crowning blessedness, that fulness of joy, that glorious love, of which now we at best conceive so faintly, and so often profanely.

her.

Ah, would that all who are given in marriage would recognise the truth as she has recognised it! Then should we see none of that wild castle-building whose falling ruins crush so miserably the fancy and the vain hope that reared them. Then should we cease searching for what has no real existence. Then should we learn, that in loving as the angels apprehend, we should be strengthened to do all things well!