self for another. Love only can reach the sublime heights of
faith and exaltation, of reverence and worship. Love alone has the power to
say, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him."

There is, however, a strange contradiction or opposition in love. Sometimes
it is as weak and timid as a bashful girl, at other times, as strong and
heroic as an Amazon; now it is like the harmony in music or the delicate
coloring of a sunset; again, like the thunderous roar of Niagara or the
consuming fire of Vesuvius.

Love is an instrument with many strings, some so delicate that they catch
the sweetest symphonies of the soul, others so powerful that they resound
to the mighty storms and tempests of life, and some so vibrant that they
throb to the sorrows and heartaches of a bleeding world.

Affection is awakened in the child with his first smile in recognition of
his mother's face. How shall this budding affection be rightly nurtured and
developed so that it shall flower and bring forth good fruit? It is desired
that he shall be generous and possess good will towards others, that he
shall have sympathy and the spirit of sacrifice for those dear to him; but
too often the fruit of promise is eaten into by the worm of selfishness.

"Selfishness is the most universal of sins and the most hateful. Dante
placed Lucifer, the embodiment of selfishness, down below all other sinners
in the dark pit of the Inferno, frozen in a sea of ice. Well did the poet
know that this sin lay at the root of all others. Think, if you can, of one
crime or vice which has not its origin in selfishness."

As already stated, the primary instincts of the child favor the development
of selfishness and the gratification of the appetites and passions. The
utmost care, therefore, must be exercised by the parents, from the very
beginning, if the affections and desires of the child are to be trained
away from itself and not permitted to become self-centered. Happy is the
child whose mother knows how to direct those earliest manifestations of
love. The undisciplined senses and appetites easily degenerate into
indulgence of passion, or grow into that moral control which delights in
temperance.

The inborn desire for praise and recognition may express itself in bragging
vanity, or expand into heroic endeavor. So, too, there is a physical love
which expresses itself in a mere caress and a higher, purer, more glorious
love which manifests itself in service and self-sac