| Things to Live For |
Chapter 10 |
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Thus love is always building up. It puts some line of beauty on every life it touches. It give new hope to discouraged one, new strength to those who are weak; thus enabling them to go on in life’s ways, when without the cheer they must have sunk down in their disheartenment. It helps the despairing to rise and start again. It makes life seem more worth while to every one into whose eyes it looks. Its words are benedictions. Its every breath is full of inspirations. It does good, and never evil, all its days. It is like God, whose name is love. It carries in its influence a perpetual revealing of God. It goes through the world like an angel of joy and peace, singing into human hearts the songs of heaven, scattering everywhere good seeds which shall yield a harvest of righteousness.
In the purposes and ambitions of life, this same distinction between knowledge and love is manifest. Knowledge is selfish, and thinks of nothing but the attaining of its own worldly end. Everything must bend to this. Success is its animating word. It is always “fighting for position;” and it strives to climb ever upward, not scrupling to use life’s relations, sometimes even its most sacred friendships, as helps toward the object of its ambition. It has no time in its days or ministries of love. It goes remorselessly on; though on its ears break the most urgent appeals for help. It knows well how to make the most of life but always thinking only of self and self aggrandizement, it cruelly pushes forward, regardless of the human needs that cry out along the way.
On the other hand, love has time for unselfishness in its busiest days, time for ministry, time for the doing of the work of Christ. It is never in such haste that it cannot stop to listen to the pleas of need, and to give a blessing. It has its own plans for its days, its own ambitions, its own programme of duty marked out; but when God sends his interruptions; it accepts them with patient spirit.
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