e do not hear anything of the great intellectual
attainments of the three great masters--Krishna, Buddha and Jesus, but only
of their great compassion; their wonderful love for mankind, and all living
things.

St. Paul, who was probably an educated man, as he held a position of
prominence among those in authority, previous to his conversion, laid
particular stress upon the love-nature as the way of illumination.

And Jesus repeatedly said "Love is the fulfilling of the law." What is the
law? The law of evolution and involution; of generation and regeneration;
when the time should come, that Love was to reign on the planet earth as it
does in the heavens above the earth, then should the kingdom of which he
foretold "be at hand," and in conclusion of this _to-be_, Jesus promised
that the law would be fulfilled when Love should come.

So Swami Vivekananda in his exposition of Vedanta declares:

"Love is higher than work, than yoga; than knowledge. Day and night think
of God in the midst of all your activities. The daily necessary thoughts
can all be thought through God. Eat to Him, drink to Him, sleep to Him, see
Him in all. Let us open ourselves to the one Divine Actor, and let Him act
and do nothing ourselves. Complete self-surrender is the only way. Put out
self, lose it; forget it."

Let us substitute for the words "God," and "Him," the one word Love, and
see what it is that we are told to do.

Love of doing good frees us from work, even though we labor from early dawn
until the night falls; so, too, if we have some loved one for whom we
strive, we can endure every hardship with equanimity, as far as our own
comfort is concerned. Few human beings in the world to-day are so enmeshed
in the personal self as to work merely for the gratification of selfish
instincts. The hard-working man, whether laborer or banker, must have some
one else for whom he struggles and strives; otherwise, he descends to a
level below that of the brute.

This is the reason for the family; the lodge; the community; the nation;
there must be some motive other than the preservation of the personal self,
in order to develop the higher quality of love which embraces the world,
until the spirit of a Christ takes possession of the human and he would
gladly offer himself a sacrifice to the world, if by so doing he could
eliminate all the pain from the world.

How natural it is to feel, when we see a loved one suffering, that we would
gladly take