To be near unto God - pagina 192

Thus it is ever the God-given love between husband and wife, which in vivid imagery is the standing expression of the love that binds the In the New Testament this is soul to God. applied to Christ. He, the son of God's good pleasure, is called the Bridegroom of his Church, and his church is the Bride, who invokes him. When Jesus analyzes the great commandment of love, he turns to the Eternal Being, and outlines this love in terms which describe the ecstacy as in life. To love God with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the mind and with all the strength, what else is this than to be entirely lost in, and consumed by, a higher drawing, which makes us ignore every other consideration, in order to know and to find and to enjoy the object of our love, in which to lose ourselves altogether? The deep significance which the love between husband and wife should always have, and which it frequently still has, can only be explained from the fact that in this love God has imaged forth the highest love between himself and the soul. This lends an holy and exalted character to This accounts for the fact this high-strung love. that when this love develops harmoniously and nobly, it creates the purest happiness on earth; that in its sensual degeneration it works ruin and corruption; and that when suddenly and inharmoniously it takes hold of a receptive mind, it wrests the intoxicated soul away from itself and leaves it a prey to semi-frenzy. For back of it all operates the higher love, which God has formed in the tie between himself and his 184

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