The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-03

own selfish desires amputated in order that we may bear fruit in the lives of our fellow men That is the whole def1- nition of love in a nutshell.
 Tell me, friend, is your life a life of love? Are you the human orange tree with the lemon buds grafted into your bark? Have you had the selfish limbs of your own life cut off? Are you stand ing like the trunk of the orange tree in the center of the multitudinous orchards of the world with your own name for gotten and obliterated that the honor and the glory of Christ may shine in the lives of your dear ones? Are you driving your roots farther and farther into the ground in order to gather up the rich nourish- ment of the soil to enrich and feed hundreds of buds which have been graft ed on your foundations? If you are, then you have the priceless characteristics l. which God honors above all other vir- tues; then you have love--purified love, triumphant love, divine love; then you are like the Lord God Almighty him self, for God is love and love is God.
 Love's First Duty.
 1 Now, if the whole essence of love is to put the Joys and the blessings and the happiness of others above all selfish hap piness and joys and blessings, what is then in it's oldest form the first duty of love? First, never to give another pain; never do anything which will bring the tear to the eye or the quiver to the lip or the sob 10 the aching heart. It does not take much to wound the sensibilities j of another. And. if your first duty of life i is to learn not to hurt yourself so the l first duty Of love should be never to hurt or to wound the feelings of another. 1 Now, it was no easy matter to learn how i not to do yourself a physical damage when you were young. It was only by painful experience that those laws of eau 1 ton were mastered. For instance, when 1 you were a boy you had a great habit l of balancing upon the chair in the dining 1 room. Your father again and again warned you to stop. He told you that l you would hurt yourself. But there was a fascination in making that chair tip back. ou felt like a trapeze performer in l mid-air. But one day you lost your bal ance and fell backward and struck your | head against the mantelpiece. The cut was l deep, the blood flowed. and you have | scar upon your head to this day. Then l after that you never balanced upon a l chair, because you knew your father was 1 right. Or take that old habit you had of I sliding down the banisters of the stair l case. It was great fun until your hand | slipped and you fell stunned upon the l floor below. Or do you rememuer that l toy cannon! You asked your mother if 1 you could have one, and she said you
 
 1 ently, and you went and bought one on l the sly. When you were about to play | Bunker Hill the cannon went off at the wrong time, and instead of knocking down l the toy soldiers your face received the I charge, and your father and mother had 1 to sit for hours digging the powder out. Aye, it was not easy to learn the lesson of physical caution. You learned it by suffering and pain; you learned it by tear hat 6ra burns and sharp knife cuts and a tumble will hurt. So you guard your body in the light of warning experiences.
 Mutual Sufferings.
 But the physical sufferngs are never as bad as the mental. The accidental blow from the baseball that prostrated you on the field and gave you head ache for days never hurt you as did the cruel words, the harsh criticism, the un- kind misrepresentation of the man whom You had trusted as a friend You all know what physical pain is. Some of | you have been under the torture of the 1 surgeons knife; but, though your physi- cal pains have been great I ask you 1 if any pain has been so excruciating as | that inflicted by one whom you have loved as a brother and who has brutally turned l against you as Brutus struck his patron l Caesar Now, my friends, if you have i suffered so much from the attacks of 1 those whom you love- beware how you 1 give pain to others whether friends or l strangers. If you have suffered so griey- l ously from the harsh words, the uncharit- 1 able insinuations the malevolent untruths of those who have treacherously turned against you without cause, learn the les son and look well to your own conduct lest you sin against another The law of love works both ways. To deserve Gods love we must graft the lives of others into our lives and make their suf- ferings our sufferings and their heart aches our heartaches.
 Brother, do not speak that harsh word You have no idea how deep it's probe cuts, | Sister, do not make that bitter interpre- tation. You think the person against whom You speak it will not hear about it. 1 He will; he will. He will hear about 1t in | its meanest and most malignant form. I l know your brother may have wronged | you; but remember the injustices which he has done you can never justify the angry thoughts you have against him. Love puts the sufferings of your enemy above your sufferings and the heartaches of those against whom you are uttering those stinging words above your own heartaches. Love suffereth long and is kind, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil beareth all things, believeth all things, nopeth all things, endureth all things.
 But we do not always want to be little children in the kindergarten of love. We do not always wish to be spiritual babies learning the negative side of the gospel, which tells us Don't do this" and Don't do that" and Don't do the other thing" We should grow in grace and grow In spiritual power and learn to utter some other prayer than the little petition
 Now I lay me down to sleep
 I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep Which we learned years ago at our mothers knees And so tn. next great step in the way of love is, Never give pain physical or mental to another" The second is like unto the first, only little higher in spiritual life. When we love our neighbors we must rejoice with them in their days of prosperity. As their sorrows should be our sorrows, so their temporal and spiritual triumphs should be our temporal and spiritual tri- umphs Their lives as trees are grafted upon us. Then we, as the orange trunk supporting them, should rejoice at the gatherings of their fruits just as much as though the autumnal nuggets of gold were taken from our own branches. Do you grasp the farreaching significance of my text? And the greatest of these is love-" The more others prosper the more we should rejoice.
 Jealous of Others Success.
 But, strange to say, some evil minded cyn,as look upon the success and the prosp iIty of other people an insult to themselves. They feel that if they l t.<, ,JI +lx o..I r,II