Wisdom Vault — onlinknow.co.za

in a dilemma or difficulty, for Love— impersonal Love— is both Knowledge and Power. He who has learned how to Love has learned how to master every difficulty, how to transmute every failure into success, how to clothe every event and condition in garments of blessedness and beauty.

The way to Love is by self-mastery, and, travelling that way, a man builds himself up in Knowledge as he proceeds. Arriving at Love, he enters into full possession of body and mind, by right of the divine Power he has earned. "Perfect Love casteth out fear."

To know Love is to know that there is no harmful power in the whole universe. Even sin itself, which the worldly and unbelieving imagine to be so unconquerable, is known as a weak and perishable 132 THE HEAVENLY LIFE thing, that shrinks and disappears before the compelling power of Good.

Perfect Love is perfect Harmlessness. He who has destroyed in himself all thoughts of harm and all desire to harm, receives the uni- versal protection, and knows himself to be invincible. Perfect Love is perfect Patience. Anger and irritability cannot dwell with it nor come near it.

It sweetens every bitter occasion with the perfume of holiness, and transmutes trial into divine strength. Com- plaint is foreign to it. He who loves bewails nothing, but accepts all things and conditions as heavenly guests; he is therefore constantly blessed, and sorrow does not overtake him.

Perfect Love is perfect Trust. He who has destroyed the desire to grasp can never be troubled with the fear of loss. Loss and gain are alike foreign to him. Stead- fastly maintaining a loving attitude of mind toward all, and pursuing in the performance of his labors a constant and loving activity, Love protects him and evermore supplies PERFECT LOVE 133 him in fullest measure with all that he needs.

Perfect Love is perfect Power. The wisely loving heart commands without exer- cising any authority. All things and all men obey him who obeys the Highest. He thinks, and lo! he has already accom- plished. He speaks, and behold! a world hangs upon his simple utterances.

He has harmonized his thoughts with the Imper- ishable and Unconquerable Forces, and for him weakness and uncertainty are no more. His every thought is a purpose; his every act an accomplishment; he moves with the Great Law, not setting his puny personal will against it, and thus becomes a channel through which the Divine Power can flow in unimpeded and beneficent expression.

He has thus become Power itself. Perfect Love is perfect Wisdom. The man who loves all is the man who knows all. Having thoroughly learned the lessons of his own heart, he knows the tasks and trials of other hearts, and adapts himself 134 THE HEAVENLY LIFE to them gently and without ostentation.

Love illuminates the intellect; without it the intellect is blind and cold and lifeless. Love succeeds where the intellect fails; sees where the intellect is blind; knows where the intellect is ignorant. Reason is only com- pleted in Love, and is ultimately absorbed in it.