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In that sublime utterance of Heaven, " I am," you have recognised your God and Saviour, and the essence of living faith. You have only to add another equally short gospel to complete the creed of salvation that is to save our nation. I mean the gospel of LOVE. Through love is man saved,thus saith the Lord. From that little word you might evolve a whole volume of saving theological literature. In it lies in a concentrated form the whole doctrine of our duties to God and man. True love is salvation. He that hath love hath God in him. What does love mean? A drawing together of hearts, they say. Men may be said to stand at some distance from each other in consequence of intervening barriers of selfishness. Love removes these barriers, brings different minds together, and binds them. This popular view of love, that holy passion of heaven, is hardly complete or satisfactory. It does not take into account the real secret of devoted love. Men do not become friends by sitting together, or even by drawing their hearts together. With this mechanical juxtaposition true affection is not satisfied. It demands

something more. So long as one heart is not absolutely identified with another, and the two become one in spirit there cannot be true love. By love I mean that holy passion which removes all differences that estrange men, and reduces a multiplicity of souls, to unity. By it ten souls, yea ten thousand souls, are so amalgamated as to form an indivisible unity. Love is nothing if it is not a thorough unification of hearts. The hardened selfish heart of man is a solid unity, living in a state of isolation, and would not coalesce with another heart. As soon, however, as the heavenly fire of love acts upon them, their separate individualities are

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dissolved and fused into a new compound. They no longer live apart from each other, but form parts of a united whole. What I have said is true not only of the highest type of religious love, but also of the inferior passion which goes by the name of love in the world. There can be no love between man and woman unless they are identified, and made of one spirit, Husbands and wives surrender their hearts to each other. Their ideas, tastes, inclinations and hopes harmonize, and their sympathy with each other in joy and sorrow becomes so intense that they may be said to possess one heart. In true sympathy lies the secret of conjugal union and happiness. An exchange of hearts is the soul of marriage. In the Hindu nuptial ritual the newly married couple thus address each other," May my heart be thine, may thy heart be mine!" marriage knot not only unites man and woman, but so blends their hearts as to make them halves of one individual person. Hence the expression, "better half." I do not mean to say that this high ideal of matrimonial alliance is actually realized in worldly marriages. What I contend for is the universal and unquestioning recognition of the principle of conjugal love. Even among those who are worldlyminded and care not for things above, it is a universally acknowledged truth that the hearts of true lovers must become one, and that they must live in each other. Love is nothing if it is not a merging of duality into unity, A further illustration of my meaning is to be found in all these social affections which embrace communities. You have faith in Patriotism. Have you not? Its popular meaning is the love of one's own country. You are sure that such a thing is not only possible, but that you are yourselves more or less actuated by this feeling. Let me

ask you, how can one love his country? Can your hearts embrace so extensive a country as India with its teeming millions of population? How can that be? How can the heart love where conception itself is lost in a vague immensity? How can one love millions whom he has never seen? The idea may seem absurd. Yet to every patriotic heart such a thing is possible. Or the word patriot would be a mere name, and nothing more. The world calls him a patriot who loves not one or two of his countrymen only, but all his countrymen and countrywomen. His country as a totality, an aggregation of myriad souls, is interwoven, as it were, into his very being, and he may be said to live in them, the identification of interests is so complete. I shall yet speak of something vaster. Not only is patriotism recognised in the world, but also that allembracing sentiment known as Philanthropy. It embraces countries and nations beyond number, yea all mankind. How many different races and tribes inhabit the world! How diverse their languages, religions, habits, and tastes! And yet in spite of these endless differences the true philanthropist can and does embrace all mankind in his inmost heart. To him all men are as one, and with humanity he is identified. Even worldly morality then, narrow though its conceptions may be, recognizes the possibility and duty of loving others in the sense of being thoroughly identified and blended into one. If earthly love possesses or assumes so high a character, how lofty must heavenly love be! I have said salvation is to be worked out by love, such love as alone can effect a thorough spiritual unification, and convert multiplicity into unity. Let me proceed to expound this principle of true love in its application to God on the one hand, and man on the other. If ye

love God with true love, and if ye love all men with true love, ye shall be saved. This is ancient and universal religion, and in this lies abridged the whole creed of human redemption. Let us first see what it is to love God. We may cherish the deepest sentiment of filial attachment to our Heavenly Father, and yet true love may be wanting. We may be united to Him by constant and fervent devotion, we may enter into deep and rapturous communion with Him in solitude, yet there may not be true love in us. I may not like what He likes; He may desire one thing and I another. Between His will and my mind there may be a conflict. There can be no love without harmony of will. Discordant inclinations prevent union. No man loves God whose will wars with His holy will. Self-will stands in the way of our union with Divinity, and must be renounced before we can love God truly. A complete sacrifice of self, and all that appertains to it, is essential. The loving devotee surrenders himself to God, and lives in Him. He dwells in God, and God dwells in him. Through love Divinity and humanity exchange homes, so to say. Where is my God? In me. Where am I? In my God. So says the true believer. The Father comes down from heaven to abide in the heart of the child, making him and his possessions all His own; while the child forsaking everything he has, even his own self, goes and dwells in. heaven, lost in the bosom of his Father. Thy will be done, not mine," said Jesus. And thereby he taught and evinced the highest love of God. Yes, this is salvation, this final and complete absorption of the human will in the Divine. You know how the Hindu mind has in all ages hungered and thirsted after something like this absorption.. Its struggles and aspirations in this direction have

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resulted, both in theory and practice, in Pantheism. Even to-day, millions of thoughtful and devout Hindus are pantheists. They look for no other heaven than an absorption of self in the Godhead. Now it is quite possible, and indeed it is one of the chief tendencies of the present dispensation, to satisfy India's craving in this matter without giving her the poison of pantheism. What she wants is a total annihilation of man's separate individuality, and his final union with God. The idea is grand in its essence, though its abuse has led to the horrors of pantheism. The Hindu pantheist's belief that he is himself God Almighty is a mischievous blasphemy. But the essential and fundamental idea of pantheistic absorption we must vindicate and admire. Man must forego his proud and rebellious individuality and so merge self-will in the will of God by devotion and love as to become one with Him, or there is no salvation. That loving communion which makes man one with God is the chief feature of the new dispensation granted unto us; and in accepting it India will be enabled to satisfy her highest and deepest craving for an extinction of the sense of duality. Verily in the highest state of absorbing love, the distinction between mine and Thine vanishes, not a trace of self is left behind, and the believer exclaims "all is Thine." God's power then becomes our vitality, His wisdom our inspiration, His purity our salvation, and His joy our heaven. Such love as this which eliminates self and imprints Divinity upon man's life, we must all acquire if we wish to be saved.

We must love man also, for it is by loving God and man with the whole soul that the gospel of salvation is fulfilled. And here too we find a beauti

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