bring forth life; and life like its own in all its powers and privileges.
This is the very life of love in its full expression.

Yet to say all this is simply to spell out fully, in all its letters and
syllables, the great, the greatest of passions, mother-love, which we
agreed a moment ago was the highest. For mother-love is not restricted to
woman, though among us humans it often finds its brightest expressions in
her. It knows no restriction of sex. It is simply love at its fullest and
highest and freest and tenderest; free to do as it will, and to do it as
fully as it will. Love left to itself, free to do as its heart dictates,
will give its very self, its life, that life may come to another. This is
the great passion called love, the greatest of all passions.



The Genesis Picture.


Now, maybe you think we have swung pretty far away from that first chapter
of the Genesis revelation. No; you are mistaken there. We have been
walking, with rapid stride, by the shortest road, straight into its inner
heart. Let us look a bit at the picture of God sketched for us in this
earliest page of revelation.

There are two creations here, first of the earth, man's home; and then of
man himself who was to live in the home. Here at once in the beginning is
mother-love. Before the new life comes the mother is absorbed in getting
the home ready; the best and softest and homiest home that her mother-love
can think of, and her fingers fix. The same mother instinct in the birds
spends itself in getting the nest ready, and then patiently broods until