Law and Love

AW is our best friend. Instead of speaking of law and love as though they were two different things, it were better to say that law is love. As civilization has advanced, love has expressed itself in law for the protection of the weak and defenseless. Hence it is at once the measure of our moral standards and the index of our civilization. The same law that forbids you to kill, pledges the life and wealth of the nation for your own protection. We need not fear it, nor stand in awe of it.

Law is not so much for us to keep as it is to keep us. When we trample on law we trample on love. We trample on ourselves. It is not the law that is so sacred, but the love, of which it is the expression. Law is the highest expression of love. The law of the family is the love of the parents for the children. Without love there could be no law, for there would be no concern. The law of the universe is the love of God. It shows His care even for the sparrow.

So the law of the moral world is God's love for men. All His laws are operating only for their good.

Every act of God is most beneficent. He never takes away a seeming pleasure that He does not provide a real one to fill its place. He never closes a door and forbids your entrance that He does not open a wider one to richer fields. He turns men from the dungeon only that they may live in a palace; out of a hovel to live in Heaven. He denies men the muck and mire and the foul filth of unkept streets that they may walk on streets well paved with gold, and inhabit palaces and inherit thrones. God the Father would stop your dirge only to set you singing a pæan of victory. He would make your sighing cease that you might shout forth the exultant strains of a sweeter music. He would stop the flow of your falling tears to make you glad with untroubled laughter. Yea, He breaks those clouds away and sweeps them back and hangs His rainbow in the sky to give you promise and hope and vision of the day undimmed with trouble and ever radiant with eternal sunlight.

Whose faith sublime

On every cloud a rainbow paints-
'T is he redeems the time.

From "Poems With Power to Strengthen Soul," by Mudge, p. 180.

61

The World God Makes and

the World Men Make

God builds a world of beauty. Men touch it and it is tarnished.

God builds a world of purity. Men touch it and it is defiled.

What God touches He glorifies. What man touches he degrades.

ONCE knew a fair young girl. She was cultured and capable. She was blithe and gay. Her form was perfect-a fit model for the sculptor's skill. Her features were fair as the lily and her cheeks like the blushing rose. Her eyes were bright as polished jewels, and sparkled like the dewdrops of the morning. Her voice was rhythmic and musical, and her laughter like the rippling waters. She was as pure as fragrance from a flower garden. Highminded, handsome, cultured, ambitious, noble, and good, she was fit to be the queen of any home, or to reign supreme upon the throne of any man's affections and make of him the noblest, happiest, manliest man, the proudest of all his kind. The music of her gentle voice, like sweet

THE WORLD GOD MAKES

echoes wafted from another shore, would charm and strengthen and drive away the cruel cares that chase him. The magic of her presence would transform his burdens into belssings and sweeten the bitterest cup that ever pressed his lips.

Her origin was divine. Everywhere were the finger-marks of God, and about her the fragrant breath of heaven. She was born to a high and holy purpose. But alas! What a change! What a fall! That which had come from the hand of God as perfect as an angel form, and as pure as a baby's dream, the hand of man had touched and spoiled. When I saw her the other day for the first time in a number of years, it was like the apparition of a ghost. So pale, and poor, and haggard. So bent, and broken, and shriveled. No music in her voice, no sparkle in her eye, no luster in her hollow cheeks. life, no ambition, no hope. Her voice was like the fading echoes of hopeless creatures lingering between despair and death. She was like the fragrant flowers drooping and dying under the biting of the fiercest frosts. Like the blooming beauties scorched and withered by the awful blasts from the hot

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