."

The law of spirit is Love. The drive of spirit is ever upward towards
progress, aspiration, and unity. If we take a drop of quicksilver and
separate it into smaller particles, as soon as ever the conditions
allow, these smaller globules will amalgamate themselves with the larger
body from which they have been temporarily divorced. We can almost
imagine we hear them utter a fervent "thank goodness" as they reach that
home of heart's desire. So are we, too, as separated and individualised
sparks of the divine fire, burning till at length we reach our freedom
and can merge ourselves in that Sun of spirit whence, "trailing clouds
of glory," we have come.

Man, we say, is a gregarious animal, and it is certainly only the man of
warped mind who seeks to cut himself off from his fellows: we are all of
us spirits, and spirit seeks unity and approach. Love is the one uniting
and binding force in the universe, just as its opposite--hatred--is the
disintegrating element. Love operates in attraction, as we see it in
motherhood, childhood, and the love of man and maid. But it also works
on the grand scale in the guise of the law of Gravity which attracts and
binds universes together, and regulates and controls the swing of
inconceivable immensities. Look again and we may see love working as
chemical affinity to attract molecule to molecule, or as cohesion to
keep the very particles knit together in kinship.

It is this spirit of love that unites the myriad cells of our own body
into the little commonwealth of self: when this life-force withdraws,
the love ceases to bind, and immediately the "dead" body becomes
infinitely alive, but the unity is at an end and decomposition has set
in. So love is the fulfilling of the law: not merely "a" law, but the
very fundamental law on which our continued existence hangs. Eliminate
gravity, and the universe as we know it must come to an end in a
catastrophe which it is beyond the power of our imagination to conceive.
If cohesion ceased to be, then everything would fall to powder and would
disintegrate. Destroy all love between man and man, and civilisation
itself would fall to pieces. This is no question of dogma, gospel, or
man-made law, it is simply a plain statement of the fundamental
condition of our very existence. The importance of love is paramount,
and if we are wise we shall seek to discover these overriding laws of
our being, and adjust our lives in conformity with their requireme