nature of things love should be the supreme thing--because it is going
to last; because in the nature of things it is an eternal life. It is
a thing that we are living now, not that we get when we die; that we
shall have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we are living
now. No worse fate can befall a man in this world than to live and
grow old all alone, unloving and unloved. To be lost is to live in an
unregenerate condition, loveless and unloved; and to be saved is to
love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God; for God is
love.

Now I have all but finished. How many of you will join me in reading
this chapter once a week for the next three months? A man did that
once and it changed his whole life. You might begin by reading it
every day, especially the verses which describe the perfect character.
"Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not
itself." Get these ingredients into your life. Then everything that
you do is eternal. It is worth doing. It is worth giving time to.
No man can become a saint in his sleep; and to fulfil the condition
required demands a certain amount of prayer and meditation and time,
just as improvement in any direction, bodily or mental, requires
preparation and care. Address yourselves to that one thing; at any
cost have this transcendent character exchanged for yours. You will
find as you look back upon your life that the moments that stand out,
the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have
done things in a spirit of love. As memory scans the past, above and
beyond all the transitory pleasures of life, there leap forward those
supreme hours when you have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to
those around about you, things too trifling to speak about, but which
you feel have entered into your eternal life. I have seen almost
all the beautiful things God has made; I have enjoyed almost every