d.
A life actuated by love is divine, whatever other limitations it may
have. Such is the perfection and glory of this emotion, when it has been
translated into a self-conscious motive, and become the energy of an
intelligent will, that it lifts him who owns it to the sublimest height
of being.

"For the loving worm within its clod,
Were diviner than a loveless God
Amid his worlds, I will dare to say."[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas Eve_.]

So excellent is this emotion that, if man, who has this power to love,
did not find the same power in God, then man would excel Him, and the
creature and Creator change parts.

"Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,
That I doubt His own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?
Here, the creature surpass the Creator,--the end what Began?"[B]

[Footnote B: _Saul_.]

Not so, says David, and with him no doubt the poet himself. God is
Himself the source and fulness of love.

"Tis Thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive:
In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to believe.
All's one gift."

* * * * *

"Would I suffer for him that I love? So would'st Thou,--so wilt Thou!
So shall crown Thee, the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown--
And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
One spot for the creature to stand in!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Saul_.]

And this same love not only constitutes the nature of God and the moral
ideal of man, but it is also the purpose and essence of all created
being, both animate and inanimate.

"This world's no blot for us,
Nor blank; it means intensely and means good."[B]

[Footnote B: _Fra Lippo Lippi_.]

"O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
And knowing this is love, and love is duty,
What further may be sought for or declared?"

In this world then "all's love, yet all's law." God permits nothing to
break through its universal sway, even the very wickedness and misery of
life are brought into the scheme of good, and, when rightly understood,
reveal themselves as its means.

"I can believe this dread machinery
Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else,
Devised--all pain, at most expenditure
Of pain by Who devised pain--to evolve,
By new machinery in counterpart,
The moral qualities of man--how else?--
To make him love in turn and be beloved,
Creative and self-sacrificing