an who does
not know by experience what love is. But you cannot tell what it is.
"Oh!" you say, "it is emotion." Yes, so is hate, its very opposite.
"Well, love is affection." Yes. What is affection? "Well, it is a
pleasurable feeling, or regard, which may be very intense, and which
leads us to unlimited sacrifice if need be. It is a devotion that grips
the soul tremendously." That is true; yet that is only telling what love
is like. No simple, plain definition of love, or light or life has ever
been formed yet by man so far as I can learn.

What is power? You may say it is force. And what is force? "Well, force
is a form of energy." What is energy? "Well," you reply, "it is a strong
inward movement whose strength is very impressive." Some one says "power
is ability." And ability? "Well, that is the innate power to do
something." And so we get to use our word in the attempted definition
itself, which is simply talking in a circle. We can find good
descriptive words, but no defining words.

Now mark a singular fact. In the writings of John, in this old book I
have here, you will find a few statements regarding these things which
combine wondrous simplicity of language with marvelous, yes,
unfathomable, depth of meaning. First, about life: in chapter one, verse
four, of the gospel:--"in Him was life," being an evident allusion to
the remarkable Genesis statement: "the Lord God breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Then, about
love: in chapter four, verse seven, of his first epistle:--"love is of
God"; coupled with the twice spoken words "God is love" in the same
chapter. About light: in chapter one, verse five, of the same epistle,
"God is light."

I know some of you, perhaps some skilled theologian here, is saying to
himself, "Those are statements of _moral_ truths." And I understand that
that is the common conception. But I want to state here my own profound
conviction, based on the Spirit-breathed words of John, that some day,
when we shall know about all these deep things, we shall be finding that
there is a basis not only of moral truth, but of far more than moral
truth underlying those profoundly simple statements.

And I believe in that day we shall find that life--all life--is, in some
actual, marvelous way, the outbreathing of God's own being. And that
light is the inherent radiance of His person and face, and that the
universal passion of love is the throbbing pulse-be