children of the same parents for each other,
both brothers and sisters--the same word is used for love between friends
where there is no tie of blood; and patriotic, or love for one's country.
And under that last word may be loosely grouped the love that one may have
for any special object, to which he may devote his life, outside of
personal relationships, such as music or any profession or occupation.

This is putting them in their logical order. Though in our experience we
know the father-and mother-love for ourselves first; and then in turn the
others, so far as they come to us, until we complete the circle and reach
the climax of father-and mother-love in ourselves going out to another.

<u>Mother-love.</u>

Now of these sorts and degrees which is the highest and finest? Well, your
answer to that question will depend entirely on your own experience; as
every answer and every thought we have of everything does. All children
have mothers, or have had, but thousands of children don't know a mother's
love.

I was speaking one time in New York City about the conception, of which
the Bible is so full, that God is a mother. And the English evangelist
Gypsy Smith, who lost his mother when very young, but who had an unusually
devoted father, said with charming simplicity that he could not just see
how God could be called a mother, but he knew He was a father. And then he
went on to speak very winsomely of God as a father.

Many times love is not born in the heart at all, until there comes into
the life some one clear outside of one's own kin. Many a woman never knows
love until it is awakened in her heart by him who henceforth is to be a
part of herself.

But the common answer, that most people everywhere give to that question,
is that <i>a mother's love</i> is the greatest human love we know. And if you
press them to tell why they think so, this stands out oftenest and
strongest--that it is because she gives so much of herself. She gives her
very life. If need be, she sacrifices everything in life, and then
sacrifices life itself, going out into the darkness of death that her
child may come into fulness and sweetness of life. This is the mother
spirit, giving one's very self to bring life to another.

The mother gives her very life-blood that the new life may come. And, if
need be, will gladly give her life <i>out</i> to the death that the new life
may come into life. And yet more, she gives her life out daily