go and buy all the poor people near you a turkey for Christmas.  “He that noticeth others shall be noticed also himself.”  If you want to get your own soul above its own troubles, go and do good to some unhappy soul.  If we do this work, I believe we will have to do it in this world.  There will be no tears to wipe away, or sorrows to assuage, or afflictions to remedy in the other world.  This work is for this world.  It is a blessed work.  It is the best investment a man can make.  It pays an hundred fold.  Labors of love demonstrate better than the church membership that we are in the Master’s service.  This is the Master’s business.  Though my way through life has often been through graveyards and through glooms, I have loved and I have been loved, and I know that life is worth living.  Love is the fulfilling of the law; the end of the gospel commandment; the bond of perfectness.  Without it, whatever be our attainments, professions or sacrifices, we are nothing.  Love obliterates the differences in education, wealth, station, religion, politics and nationality.  It is a promoter of peace and harmony; it cultivates the social graces; it makes friends of strangers and brothers of acquaintances; it softens the asperities of life; it worships at the shrine of piety, and recognizes the omnipotence of God and the immortality of man.  It is religious not sectarian, patriotic but not partisan.  It glows by the fireside, radiant with perpetual joy.  It glorifies God in worship and in song.  It blesses humanity in genial mirth and human sympathies.  It is a perennial fountain at which the old may drink and grow strong.  It is a daily benediction to its devotees, and, like “a thing of beauty, is a joy forever.”  It stands like the statue of liberty, a beacon light to the tempest-tossed and wayfaring mariner and brother, pointing him the way to the haven of refuge, to the right living and right doing.

Oh love, thou mightiest gift of God; thou white-winged trust in Him who doeth all things well; thou one light over His darkest providences, lingering to cheer when all else has passed away, thy whisper upon the dull ear of night.  But alas! this world was made to break hearts in, while love was sent from heaven to heal them.  The precious balm, though, is so scarce that many must die for want of it.  Oh, the might-have-been!  What human soul has not sung that dirge?  Verily, the winds come, howling it by like an invisible band of mourners from the grave of all things.  Alas! is anything in this life real, or are we indeed shadows, and this world altogether a shadowy land, while the blackened skies above give us only glimpses of a far-off better home, better friends and better love?  Alas!  Heaven’s loudest complaint to mortals is ever for lack of love.  Even He who sitteth upon the throne of thrones knoweth what it is to stretch out His arms in utter desertion of no one to love Him, no one to seek Him, and no one to fear Him—­“no, not one.”