THE ONE ETERNAL LESSON

for us all is how better we can love.

What makes a man a good cricketer?  Practice.  What makes a man a good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician?  Practice.  What makes a man a good linguist, a good stenographer?  Practice.  What makes a man a good man?  Practice.  Nothing else.  There is nothing capricious about religion.  We do not get the soul in different ways, under different laws, from those in which we get the body and the mind.  If a man does not exercise his arm he develops no biceps muscle; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he acquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigor of moral fibre, no beauty of spiritual growth.  Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion.  It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression of the whole round Christian character—­the Christlike nature in its fullest development.  And the constituents of this great character are only to be built up by

          CEASELESS PRACTICE.

What was Christ doing in the carpenter’s shop?  Practising.  Though perfect, we read that He learned obedience, and grew in wisdom and in favor with God.  Do not quarrel, therefore, with your lot in life.  Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to live and work with.  Above all, do not resent temptation; do not be perplexed because it seems to thicken round you more and more, and ceases neither for effort nor for agony nor prayer.  That is your practice.  That is the practice which God appoints you; and it is having its work in making you patient, and humble, and generous, and unselfish, and kind, and courteous.  Do not grudge the hand that is moulding the still too shapeless image within you.  It is growing more beautiful, though you see it not; and every touch of temptation may add to its perfection.  Therefore keep in the midst of life.  Do not isolate yourself.  Be among men and among things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles.  You remember Goethe’s words:  “Talent develops itself in solitude; character in the stream of life.”  Talent develops itself in solitude—­the talent of prayer, of faith, of meditation, of seeing the unseen; character grows in the stream of the world’s life.  That chiefly is where men are to learn love.

How?  Now, how?  To make it easier, I have named a few of the elements of love.  But these are only elements.  Love itself can never be defined.  Light is a something more than the sum of its ingredients—­a glowing, dazzling, tremulous ether.  And love is something more than all its elements—­a palpitating, quivering, sensitive, living thing.  By synthesis of all the colors, men can make whiteness, they cannot make light.  By synthesis of all the virtues, men can make virtue, they cannot make love.  How then are we to have this transcendent living whole conveyed into our souls?  We brace our wills to secure it.  We try to copy those who have it.  We lay down rules about it.  We watch.  We pray.  But these things alone will not bring love into our nature.  Love is an effect.  And only as we fulfill the right condition can we have the effect produced.  Shall I tell you what the cause is?