p. 147 | The Law of Love

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 4, 1869

The Law of Love.

Saw an old man one day—“When I look back over the long pilgrimage of an eventful, and not unsuccessful, life, I can confidently say that I never did a kindness to any human being without finding myself the happier for it afterward. A single friendly act, cheerfully, pleasantly, and promptly, done to a fellow-creature in trouble or difficulty, besides the good to him, has before now thrown a streak of sunshine into my heart for the remainder of the day, which I would not have taken a twenty-dollar bank note for.”

If such acts of thoughtfulness and consideration and humane sympathy were performed as we “have opportunity,” the same “streak of sunshine,” the same lightening up of the load of life, would come to both giver and receiver, until after a while there would be sunshine all the time within us and without, dispersing physical as well as moral miasms, purifying the social and domestic atmosphere, warming the heart to still higher sympathies, and waking up the whole man to these activities which can never fail to preserve, maintain, and perpetuate mental, moral, and physical health, to a serene old age. These things are to be done at home and abroad, at the family table, in the street, on the highway, in the country, by day and by night, everywhere, kindly and faithfully, as there is “opportunity;” to the old, and the young, to the rich and the poor, to the sick and the well, to the successful and the unfortunate, to stranger and acquaintance, to man and woman, enemy and friend, to everybody and everything that breathes the breath of life. These sunlight-giving kindnesses can be done in multitudes of cases by a word, a smile, a look. And these cost so little, why should they not be thrown broadcast over the whole surface of humanity, in princely profusion, blessing, as they do, the giver as well as receiver, giving gladness to both, and a quiet peace which gold could never purchase, which diamonds of the purest water and gems of richest hue could not secure for the briefest hour? Men, women, children, all, wake up from this good hour and make the “law of love” to all human kind the polestar of life, the work, the pleasure of your human existence. —Hall’s Journal of Health.