If then this marvellous, this amazing power of love can cause men
to make, with joy and gladness, sacrifices of which in their
loveless days they would have deemed themselves and confessed
themselves wholly incapable, can we not feel with confidence that
the power, which lies thus deepest in the heart of the world, lies
also deepest in the heart of God, of Whom the world is but a faint
reflection? It cannot be otherwise. We may sadly ponder, indeed,
why the love that has been, or that might have been, the strength
of weary lives should be withdrawn or sternly withheld, but we need
not be afraid, if we have one generous impulse for another, if we
ever put aside a delight that may please or attract us, for the
sake of one who expects or would value any smallest service--and
there are few who cannot feel this--we need not then, I say, doubt
that the love which we desire, and which we have somehow missed or
lost, is there waiting for us, ours all the time, if we but knew
it.
And even if we miss the sweet influence of love in our lives, is
there any one who has not, in solitude and dreariness, looked back
upon the time when he was surrounded by love and opportunities of
love, in childhood or in youth, with a bitter regret that he did
not make more of it when it was so near to him, that he was so
blind and selfish, that he was not a little more tender, a little
more kind? I will speak frankly for myself and say that the
memories which hurt me most, when I stumble upon them, are those of
the small occasions when I showed myself perverse and hard; when
eyes, long since closed, looked at me with a pathetic expectancy;
when I warded off the loving impulse by some jealous sense of my
own rights, some peevish anger at a fancied injustice; when I
stifled the smile and withheld the hand, and turned away in
silence, glad, in that poisonous moment, to feel that I could at
all events inflict that pain in base requital.
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