ppiness, the restlessness and pain of all
our human "loves," is due to the fact that the only eternal response
to Love as it beats its hands against the barriers set up against it,
is the embodiment of Love itself as we feel it present with us in the
figure of Christ.

The love which draws two human souls together can only become
eternal and indestructible when it passes beyond the love of the
two for one another into the love of both of them for the Lover
who is immortal. This merging of the love of human lovers into
the love of the immortal Lover does not imply the lessening or
diminishing of the love which draws them together. The nature of
this love cries out against their separation, cries out that they two
shall become one. And yet if they actually and in very truth
became one, that unity in difference which is the very essence of
love would be destroyed. But though they know this well enough
there still remains the desperate craving of the two that they
should become one; and this is of the very nature of love itself.
Thus it may be seen that the only path by which human lovers can
be satisfied is by merging their love for one another into their love
for Christ. In this way, in a sense profounder than mortal flesh can
know, they actually do become one. They become so completely
one that no power on earth or above the earth can ever separate
them. For they are bound together by no mortal link but by the
eternal love of a soul beyond the reach of death. Thus when one of
them comes to die the love which was of the essence of that soul
lives on in the soul of Christ; and when both of them are dead it
can never be as though their love had not been, for in the eternal
memory of Christ their love lives on, increasing the love of Christ
for others like themselves and continually drawing the transitory
and the mortal nearer to the eternal and the immortal.

It therefore becomes evident why it is that the vision of the
invisible companions which remains our standard of reality and of
beauty is not broken up into innumerable subjective visions but is
fixed and permanent and sure. All the unfathomable souls of the
world, and all souls are unfathomable whether they are the souls of
plants or animals or planets or gods or men, are found, the closer
they approach one another, to be in possession of the same vision.
For this immortal vision, in which what we name beauty, and what
we name "reality," finds its synthesis, is fou