Love also perfects religion.  It is the glory of Christ that he unveils the sovereignty of character and crowns manhood with all-maturing and all-perfecting love.  Looking backward, man finds that all religions fall into four classes:  There is the religion of fear and force, when man offers sacrifices to appease the gods and conciliate justice.  There is the religion of law, when men reduce life to formal rules, and the Pharisee rigorously fulfills his duty as chief, or trader, or friend.  There is the religion of romanticism, when men of powerful intellect and strong imagination evolve their ideal and, withdrawing to some cave, give themselves to reverie.  In all such self becomes an orb, so large as to eclipse brother man and God.  Last of all there is the religion of Christ, in which love is root, blossom and fruitage.  It aims at the development and unfolding of everything that is gracious in life, whatever strikes at admiration, whether it is in school, in art, in song, in wit, in travel, in books; whatever is praiseworthy in courage or endurance, whatever has fineness and sweetness and nobility; all that belongs to the hero and patriot; all that belongs to the seer and scholar; all that belongs to leadership in trade and commerce—­all these elements are to be united and carried upward into the sweetness and purity of life, until the full man, standing apart and standing above life, seems to have been informed with divine love, as with a presence.

And when love has made the most of the man himself it overflows to bless others.  Christ’s disciples are not here to be ministered unto, but to minister.  Religion, says Christ, is love, and love is gentle toward those with hollow eyes and famine-stricken faces.  Love is kindly toward those who have a tragedy written in the sharpened countenance.  Love is patient toward those who have lost fidelity, as a man loses a golden coin; who have lost morality as one who flounders in the Alpine drifts.  And this religion of love takes on a thousand modern forms.  If it is not rowing out against the darkness and storm, as did Grace Darling to save the shipwrecked, it is going forth to those tossed upon life’s billows, to succor and to save.  For love is making the individual life beautiful, making the home beautiful, and will at last make the church and state beautiful.  Men will not bow down to crowned power nor philosophic power nor esthetic power; but, in the presence of a great soul, filled with vigor of inspiration and glowing with love, man will do obeisance.  There is no force upon earth like divine love in the heart of man, and at last that force will sweeten and regenerate society.