The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Empire of Love, by W. J. Dawson

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Title: The Empire of Love

Author: W. J. Dawson

Release Date: August 28, 2006 [EBook #19134]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EMPIRE OF LOVE ***

Produced by Al Haines

The Empire of Love

By

W. J. DAWSON

New York Chicago Toronto

Fleming H. Revell Company

London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1907, by

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

  New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
  Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue
  Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
  London: 21 Paternoster Square
  Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

  To
  M. M. D.,

who, during the last two years of our residence in London, practiced the teachings of this book before I taught them:

proving daily in her compassionate toil for others the divine efficacy of simple love to redeem the lives, that were most estranged from virtue, and most lost to hope.

Love feels no burden, regards not labours, would willingly do more than it is able, pleads not impossibility, because it feels that it can and may do all things.

THOMAS À KEMPIS.

CONTENTS

I. THE GENIUS TO BE LOVED II. WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY? III. THE JUSTICE OF JESUS IV. LOVE IS JUSTICE V. LOVE AND FORGIVENESS VI. THE PRACTICE OF LOVE VII. LOVE AND JUDGMENT VIII. THE WISDOM OF THE SIMPLE IX. THE REVELATIONS OF GRIEF X. A CONFESSION XI. A LOVER OF MEN XII. THE LAW OF COMPASSION XIII. THE EMPIRE OF LOVE XIV. THE BUILDERS OF THE EMPIRE

THE GENIUS TO BE LOVED

WHY THEY LOVED HIM

  So kindly was His love to us,
    (We had not heard of love before),
  That all our life grew glorious
    When He had halted at our door.

  So meekly did He love us men,
    Though blind we were with shameful sin,
  He touched our eyes with tears, and then
    Led God's tall angels flaming in.

  He dwelt with us a little space,
    As mothers do in childhood's years,
  And still we can discern His face
    Wherever Joy or Love appears.

  He made our virtues all His own,
    And lent them grace we could not give,
  And now our world seems His alone,
    And while we live He seems to live.

  He took our sorrows and our pain,
    And hid their torture in His breast,
  Till we received them back again
    To find on each His grief impressed.

  He clasped our children in His arms,
    And showed us where their beauty shone,
  He took from us our gray alarms,
    And put Death's icy armour on.

  So gentle were His ways with us,
    That crippled souls had ceased to sigh,
  On them He laid His hands, and thus
    They gloried at His passing by.

  Without reproof or word of blame,
    As mothers do in childhood's years,
  He kissed our lips in spite of shame,
    And stayed the passage of our tears.

  So tender was His love to us,
    (We had not learned to love before),
  That we grew like to Him, and thus
    Men sought His grace in us once more.

CONINGSBY WILLIAM DAWSON.

I

THE GENIUS TO BE LOVED

In the history of the last two thousand years there is but one Person who has been, and is supremely loved. Many have been loved by individuals, by groups of persons, or by communities; some have received the pliant idolatries of nations, such as heroes and national deliverers; but in every instance the sense of love thus excited has been intimately associated with some triumph of intellect, or some resounding achievement in the world of action. In this there is nothing unusual, for man is a natural worshipper of heroes. But in Jesus Christ we discover something very different; He possessed the genius to be loved in so transcendent a degree that it appears His sole genius.

Jesus is loved not for anything that He taught, nor yet wholly for anything that He did, although His actions culminate in the divine fascination of the Cross, but rather for what He was in Himself. His very name provokes in countless millions a reverent tenderness of emotion usually associated only with the most sacred and intimate of human relationships. He is loved with a certain purity and intensity of passion that transcends even the most intimate expressions of human emotion. The curious thing is that He Himself anticipated this kind of love as His eternal heritage with men. He expected that men would love Him more than father or mother, wife or child, and even made such a love a condition of what He called discipleship. The greatest marvel of all human history is that this prognostication has been strictly verified in the event. He is the Supreme Lover, for whose love, unrealizable as it is by touch, or glance, or spoken word, or momentary presence, men and women are still willing to sacrifice themselves, and surrender all things. The pregnant words of Napoleon, uttered in his last lonely reveries in St. Helena, still express the strangest thing in universal history: "Caesar, Charlemagne, I, have founded empires. They were founded on force, and have perished. Jesus Christ has founded an empire on love, and to this day there are millions ready to die for Him."

Napoleon felt the wonder of it all, the baffling, inexplicable marvel. Were we able to detach ourselves enough from use and custom, to survey the movement of human thought from some lonely height above the floods of Time, as Napoleon in the high sea-silences of St. Helena, we also might feel the wonder of this most wonderful thing the world has ever known.

That the majority of men, and even Christian men, do not perceive that the whole meaning of the life of Christ is Love is a thing too obvious to demand evidence or invite contradiction. I say men, and Christian men, thus limiting my statement, because women and Christian women, frequently do perceive it, being themselves the creatures of affection, and finding in affection the one sufficing symbol of life and of the universe. It is a St. Catherine who thinks of herself as the bride of Christ, and dreams the lovely vision of the changed hearts—the heart of Jesus placed by the hands that bled beneath her pure bosom, and her heart hidden in the side of Him who died for her. It is a St. Theresa who melts into ecstasy at the brooding presence of