LOVE by F. Flood | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 2, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 27.

LOVE

By F. Flood

WE may talk about love; but we can not define it, for in depth and breadth it is as high and as far-reaching as God. For God is love; and we must have the same heart of love within ourselves.

Love is a beautiful adornment. The heathen adorn themselves with gold, and rare stones, and with costly raiment. After all this display, they are no more beautiful in God's eyes than they were before. But he who permits the love of God to fill his heart is a person of rare beauty. God is pleased with such persons, and we feel attracted to them, as we do to the beautiful flowers. The perfume of the flowers is very sweet, and so is the fragrance of love.

When a person whose heart is love-filled speaks with you, his words are like music to the ear. There is in them no malice, no hatred, no evil-surmising, no evil-speaking, no backbiting. These are of another spirit, and can not abide with love. Love is a peace-maker.

Have you ever met love in a sick-room? How welcome it was. Have you met love on a wash-day? Was it not beautiful? And when you met love in the nursery, how it made your heart rejoice.

But when love met a fault in a brother, did it go about telling it, first to one and then to another, thus blazing it abroad?—No, that was not love. Love ever seeks to cover a fault in a brother, just as we would endeavor to cover some very disagreeable fault in ourselves. O, then, let us cultivate the love of God in our hearts, that, when it shall blossom, and bring forth its ripened fruit, like the beautiful flowers it will diffuse its sweet fragrance everywhere.

F. FLOOD.

Alameda, Cal.