Speaker 1: Perfect love. The children of Light who abide in the
Kingdom of Heaven see the universe and all that it
contains as the manifestation of one law, the law of love.
They see love as the molding, sustaining, protecting, and perfecting
power imminent in all things animate and inanimate. To them,
love is not merely and only a rule of life.
It is the law of life. It is life itself.
Knowing this, they order their whole life in accordance with love,
not regarding their own personality. By thus practicing obedience to
the highest, to the divine love, they become conscious partakers
of the power of love, and so arrive at perfect
freedom as masters of destiny. The universe is preserved because
love is at the heart of it. Love is the
only preservative power. There is hatred in the heart of man.
He imagines law to be cruel, But when his heart
is mellowed by compassion and love, he perceives that the
law is infinite kindness. So kind is the law that
it protects man against his own ignorance. Man, in his
puny efforts to subvert the law by attaching undue importance
to his own little personality, brings upon himself such trains
of suffering, that he is at last compelled, in the
depths of his afflictions to seek for wisdom, and finding wisdom,
he finds love and knows it as the law of
his being, the law of the universe. Love does not
punish Man punishes himself by his own hatred, by striving
to preserve evil, which has no life by which to
preserve itself, and by trying to subvert love, which can
neither be overcome nor destroyed, being of the substance of life.
When a man burns himself, does he accuse the fire. Therefore,
when a man suffers, let him look for some ignorance
or disobedience within himself. Love is perfect harmony, pure bliss,
and contains therefore no element of suffering. Let a man
think no thought and do no act which is not
in accordance with pure love, and suffering shall no more
trouble him. If a man would know love and partake
of its undying bliss, he must practice it in his heart.
He must become love. He who always acts from the
spirit of love, is never deserted, is never left 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 ever ever re
event and condition in garments of blessedness and beauty. The
way to love is by self mastery, and traveling 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. 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 is so unconquerable,
is known as a very weak and perishable thing that
shrinks away and disappears before the compelling power of good.
Perfect love is perfect harmlessness, and he who has destroyed
in himself all thoughts of harm and all desire to harm,
receives the universal 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. Complaint 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.
Steadfastly maintaining a lovable attitude of mind toward all and
pursuing in the performance of his duties a constant and
loving activity, love protects him and evermore supplies him in
fullest measure with all that he needs. Perfect love is
perfect power. The wise, loving heart commands, without exercising any authority.
All things and all men obey him who obeys the
highest he thinks, and low he has already accomplished. He
speaks and behold a world hangs upon his simple utterances.
He has harmonized his thoughts with the imperishable and unconquerable forces,
and for him, weakness and uncertainty are no more. His
every thought is a purpose, his every act and accomplishment.
He moves with the great law, not setting his puny
personal will against it, and he 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 heart arts, and adapts himself to them gently and
without ostentation. Love illuminates the intellect. Without it, the intellect
is blind and cold and lifeless. Love succeeds where intellect fails,
sees where intellect is blind, knows where intellect is ignorant.
Reason is only completed in love and is ultimately absorbed
in it. Love is the supreme reality in the universe,
and as such it contains all truth. Infinite tenderness enfolds
and cherishes the universe. Therefore is the wise man, gentle
and childlike, and tender hearted. He sees that the one
thing which all creatures need is love, and he gives
it unstintingly. He knows that all occasions require the adjusting
power of love, and he ceases from harshness to the
eye of love. All things are revealed not as an
infinity of complex effects, but in the light of eternal principles,
out of which spring all causes and effects, and back
into which they return. God is Love. Therefore, then love,
there is nothing more perfect. He who would find pure knowledge,
let him find pure love. Perfect love is perfect peace.
He who dwells with it has completed his pilgrimage in
the underworld of sorrow, with mind calm and heart at rest.
He has banished the shadows of grief and knows the
deathless life. If you would perfect yourself in knowledge, perfect
yourself in love, if you would reach the highest ceaselessly
cultivate a loving and compassionate heart,