The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 549

NATURAL LOVE

509

eggs at the price of her life. And altho neither cat nor dog hay the least consideration for the mother love of hen or duck, yet both manifest the same love for their young ones. The most bloodthirsty animals, even tigers and hyenas, are never more enraged than when the hunter approaches their whelps too closely. It is unnecessary to say that love in this sense has no moral value. Yet

Christ made the love of the mother hen a type love for His people and for Jerusalem. And when our small boys are furious when they see the male rabbit kill his young it is

not valueless.

of His

own

while the female fights for them, there is in their boyish hearts a pure voice of praise for the superior love of that little mother.

However, praise for this love which is merely instinctive, increated, and irresistible belongs, not to the mother hen or mother lion, but to

Him who

created

it

in them.

Turning from the love of surprised to meet

phenomena

instinct to the world of

men, we are

closely resembling

A

it.

coquettish

maiden, apparently devoid of all devotion, becomes a wife and mother, and suddenly she seems to have been initiated into the mysteries of love.

She

suffers for

it

Her infant is the only object of all her thoughts. without complaint, fondles and cherishes it and ;

a cruel dog were to attack the babe, as a heroine the otherwise timid maiden would fight the monster. if

And in that

yet with

mother

is

all

these similarities there

is

a difference.

Love

weaker than in the animal.

For hours she can leave her child in the care of others, while the brooding mother bird scarcely leaves the nest at all. The former has affection for other

away

members all that

of the family, but the latter with shrieks drives dare approach the nest. In a word, the animal's ma-

more absolute, and in this respect excels the love of young mother. But when the chickens are half grown, the mother forgets and forsakes them while the love of most mothternal love is

the

;

ers for their tender infants gradually assumes a nobler character, rising from instinctive love to spiritual love. mother's

A

power

lies

in the fact that %\i& prays for her child.

Evidently we must distinguish here two kinds of love a lower form which springs from the blood, which the mother has in common with the bird, but which is less constant; and a superior love :

of another sort lacking in the hen,

passes the animal.

by which the human

far sur-

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