Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself

What is love if not the whisper of every tree in heaven, the breath of every flower; the rippling waters sing it to the banks which drink their kisses? The dew bears it to every blade of grass, the zephyrs chant it as they pass; yon craggy peaks declare it all the day, and in the vaulted dome above, its echoes find eternal habitation. It is the architect of every home, the motive power of every act, the subject of every prayer.

Love unaided designed the plains of heaven, fitted every bower, and spread each couch upon which the pilgrim soul might rest.

Flower, tree, and shrub; hill, dale, and stream, and all that clothes this happy state in which we dwell, are evolutions from herself. Love is our Mother, our Father’s bride - how can we do other than magnify her name?”

“Love, then, should be our theme in our ministry on earth” “Yes! That was the one gospel of Christ, and following Him, it is the only theme that can fall from heaven.

Let us sing of love waiting to crown the victor when the fight is done; let us breathe it into the ear of him who feared the issue of the battle, and tell it to inspire the nobility of youth.

Its bread should feed the hungry, its waters cool the fevered tongue of the one gone astray. Its balm should be employed to heal the broken heart. Let us use it as the key of hope to release the prisoner of fear, build it up as a tower of refuge for the tempted, make it the one consolation for the bereaved.

It should become the anchor of the merchant, the restraining power of the spend-thrift, the curb for avarice, and the fetter by which to hold the brute.

Let us gather the nations together that they might hear the requiem its down pour would sing as they buried war’s alarm. Let us marshal earth’s battalions side by side, and march them through its perfumed spray, to wash the curse of caste and color from each soul, and leave them brothers all.

Fear, punishment and retribution we should hold in long restraint, while we tried to charm each wanderer homeward, as we sing the legitimate music his Father composed to win him back from sin and misery to his rightful home and heritage.”

Anon