If selfishness is ever overcome, if it is ever transformed into service, it
will be when love is triumphant; for love alone is great enough to
sacrifice itself 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."