SOCIETY by Mary Wood-Allen

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 13, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 19.

SOCIETY

By Mary Wood-Allen

BY MARY WOOD-ALLEN, M. D.

Love.

LOVE is a word of transcendent meaning. God is love. All feeling that is worthy of the name of love must then be divine, and to speak of it flippantly, or with vulgar jest, is to profane the name of the Most High. As Emerson says, “Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.” When we truly love we can say with Longfellow, “There is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love.”

Sad indeed, is it then that we have so desecrated this holy feeling by thoughts which bring the “knowing” smile or suggestive word! And, alas, too, that so much of that which poses for love is merely selfishness. The only essence of true love is self-forgetfulness. “Love seeketh not her own.” By this test may we try the coin of love and prove it to be alloy or pure gold.

Young man, you think you love this young woman and desire her for your life companion. Examine your own heart. What is it you love in her? You admire the bright eye, the rosy cheek, the graceful form, the charming manner. But admiration is not love, and will flee as these charms pass away. You are thrilled by her glance and plunged into an ecstasy by her touch. But thrills and ecstasies are not love, and with constant companionship may come satiety and indifference. What are you thinking of when you think of your future life together? Of what she can give to you? Do you picture the comfort she will create in your home, the care she will bestow on you, the ministrations she will give you? This is but self-love—loving yourself through her. If you truly love her you will think of what you can do for her, of the service you can render her, of the self-denial you can practise for her.

If you love truly and the bright eyes grow dim you would rejoice in being eyes for her. If the deft hands and eager feet should become helpless you would joy in being hands and feet for her. Even if the light of reason should fade from the bright eye true love would not die, but would spend itself in watchful protecting ministrations, counting no labor too wearisome, no sacrifice too great. “Love suffereth long and is kind. Love never faileth.” By these tests may you know that you truly love.

And you, gay-hearted girl, of what are you dreaming when you say you love? Are you thinking of the freedom that marriage will bring, of the protection, the financial advantage, the home, the social position, the petting and waiting-on that will be yours. This is all love of self only, and has in it no touch of true love, the love that “seeketh not her own.” If you love him, and not yourself, you will be thinking of what you can do to make him happy; how you can please his taste, make his home comfortable, sympathise with his aspirations, stimulate his nobler ambitions, and grow daily into a nearer oneness with him. Do you say that I advise you to forget yourself in thinking of him? If he loves truly you will not have to think of yourself, for he will do that. You will be

“Two souls in sweet accord, Each for each caring and each self unheard. Bringing life's discords into perfect tune.”

But there can not be this perfect harmony without a true acquaintance. The foundation of all true love is friendship, the frank association without sentimentality which permits of an interchange of thought and feeling, an expression of opinions that insures a knowledge of each other's true selves, so that there may be no sudden disillusioning after the irrevocable vow has been spoken. In this honest comradeship sentimentality should not enter. There should be no personal familiarity, no endearments, no coquetries which blind the vision and disturb the mental poise.

It is unfortunate that the world surrounds all associations of men and women with an atmosphere of romance and passion that makes friendship next to impossible. Men and women are souls, and their association should be principally on the spiritual and intellectual plane in which there is honest comradeship. Then when a man and woman grow, through knowledge of each other into that deeper sympathy of love, there will be a dignity in the fact that is lacking when all associations are supposed to rest on the romantic basis. Then can the lover say with solemn earnestness, “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God.” “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us.”