The masterwheel

Front matter

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Foreword

No other age in all history has been ruled more by love than this. The governing spirit of the time, happily be it said, is not a sudden outburst of sentimentalism, a craze for the emotional, nor a renaissance of the romantic. It is a healthy, normal growth, as is evidenced by the spread of evangelism and the betterment of the world. In the abuse and perversion of our freedom and enlightenment, however, love may fall a victim to the material and commercial tendencies of the era, and be prostituted to loose or false notions of justice, righteousness, and charity. There has not been a moment in all the past more important than the present to emphasize that "greatest of these," and this book has been written for such a purpose. We must agree that it is proper to cultivate the intellect. If so, why not the affections ? We develop the head, why not the heart ?

The author has covered almost every phase of life and relationship. He has utilized all means to find the wants of human nature, and, as a master-workman, has wrought a key to open wide the portals of every heart to the warmth and light of love. He has demonstrated that there is no form or connection of human existence that does not come within the reach of this all-controlling passion; and he has shown that without it, or with it perverted, all other passions or emotions are powerless to give complete happiness to the human race.

8 Foreword

Dr. Lofton, through his years of ministry, has had his finger on the pulse of humanity. He knows the signs and symptoms of man's soul-sickness as well as the skilled physician knows the ills of the body. Long ago he contemplated such a work as The Masterwheel, dealing with the universality of love as a fundamental law of life, its power in moving men, and its key-position in the mechanism of God's creation and man's achievement. The opportunity to put his meditations into such tangible form and shape as to benefit his fellows did not come until recently, however, and the result of that opportunity is this book. Dr. Lofton's deep wisdom, his ripe scholarship, and his heart-inclination to those around him never showed to better advantage than in its pages. The success of "Character Sketches" was founded on its wonderful mirroring of life. "Harp of Life" followed pretty much the same path as its predecessor. But The Masterwheel is different. While it shows the same keen knowledge of men and women and has the same adherence to the doctrine of commonsense, yet it reveals deeper thought, a clearer view, and a more philosophic mind than either of the other books. Unquestionably it is the author's best work.

The illustrations are by the author, and, save a few adapted in a way to make them applicable to the subject, are original in design and execution. In the production of these pictures the author sets up no claim to the skill of the artist.

Introduction

BY DR. IRA LANDRITH, REGENT OF BELMONT COLLEGE.

All that is best — and worst — in our lives is propelled by love. Under its impulse men delight to live, or dare to die. Truly it is the masterwheel that governs the mechanism of the universe. Impelled by love, the noblest have surrendered to the ignoblest, and the vilest have become honorable. Nothing has been too good and nothing too bad for men and women to undertake at love's behest. At once the greatest joy and blessing, love often is the greatest peril and source of danger in our lives. If there were no counterfeits in this coin of the heart, there would be no danger in its circulation. But like many another good and perfect gift this one often has been contaminated, imitated, prostituted.

The felon and the saint bear similar testimony: "I am what I am because I love." The wise and the foolish, the true and the false, the great and the small, the virtuous and the vile, the good and the bad, are all alike made so by love. Heaven receives its population from .the arms of holy love, and hell would be empty but for base devotion.

"God is love," and yet for love men have been dishonored, become murderers, descended to every grade of villainy; women have followed them downward, and, sometimes, alas ! have gone down before them. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son,"

10 Introduction

and yet for their loves human beings have given up the very thing for which God out of his love gave his Son, "everlasting life/'

The author of this volume, therefore, has undertaken a task which is in the nature of putting first things first. He is beginning at the beginning of all good and of every evil. He would propose the purifying of the stream of life at the very source of all right and wrong. He knows that if the heart is right the hand will not be wrong. It is the philosophy of the Sermon on the Mount, the deep significance of "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he/' Our author takes men and women and children where he finds them, and attempts to tell them where they ought to be, and what, and why. His is at once a task most blessed and tremendous. Despite his difficulties, he is always comprehensive and always faithful, as is shown by his analysis of love into so many kinds, and his discussion of fully fifty manifestations of affection.

If the author of these pages had written alone of domestic love in these days of wholesome revival of interest in the home, thousands would have studied what he had to say. In much more than a sentimental way both churchmanship and statesmanship are busy with this problem. Eighty per cent of the crime in our larger cities is attributed to men and women who have had practically no home life. The home, still more nearly than any other institution, reaches our life, reaches it earlier, and for the first twenty years at least more constantly than does the Church or the school or any other agency for character-making. It is of the supremest importance, therefore, that the home be wholesome, its loves pure and abundant, and that nothing be

Introduction 11

allowed to continue to imperil the fireside as gravely as many things now do, among them the haste with which homes are made, the unhomelike places in which families live, the maudlin sentiment that all women ought to be wage-earners, and the suicidal strenuousness of our too busy lives. Our author has recognized and attacked not only these but other hazards of the home; and he has treated the subject in at least fifteen ways directly; indirectly its discussion appears on almost every page, for he has realized that when all other loves are right domestic love cannot be wrong.

If our author had been content to discuss for us only what in general he has termed "Religious Love," devotion to the highest things of the spirit, he would have deserved the wide reading he is going to receive; for, although books on this theme are nearly numberless, the last word has not been written, and no writer has found the last — nor the best, probably — of the effective ways of presenting the cardinal truth that if we love God we are bound to love our neighbor. "If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments." Fourteen phases of this vital "law of life" are considered in this volume.

Had our author spent his entire strength upon such natural love as that which normal men have for life and liberty, country and truth, we should be eager for the contribution he might make to the literature of this •philosophy of life. But he has shown us this truth from as many as fifteen angles of vision.

If our author had done no more in this book than lift a fiery danger-signal as a warning to those who are menaced by the deadly perils of licentious love, he should have the gratitude of all who know anything about this most prolific and hideous mother of the blackest vices

12 Introduction

that people perdition. But he has not stopped with a candid and clean calling of things by their right names — he has shown us also how hateful are all kindred and contributing sins.

Does our author exhaust these subjects? He does not, he has not even tried, because he would attempt no impossible task. All the poets have failed, and all the philosophers have had to write "To be continued" after their last words on love. In one way or another every sage in every age has spent his life in a vain effort to know the whole truth about this deepest of all wisdom, and then has passed into the presence of the only Being in all the universe who, because it is His name and character, could accurately answer the question, the first and last question of every man who is capable of thinking, "What is love?" But our author has done what is better than to vainly strive to exhaust this subject, he has given us the ripest results of his whole life's study of what the right quality and. degree of love will do for us and what the wrong kind is certain to do against us ; and, this great task completed, he has told us how to obtain the wholesome and abstain from the hurtful loves that make their appeal to us. This done, the reader alone is responsible if his is not the stalwart heroism to say, with the decisiveness and self-mastery of true success,

When I see a thing is true,

I'll go to work and put it through.

Ira Landrith.

Part I. Domestic Love

* Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there 's no place like home;

A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,

Which, seek through the -world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.

Home, home, sweet, sweet home;

There's no place like home, O there's no place like home.

— -John Howard Payne.

LOVE: WHAT IS IT?

T will not suffice to deal simply in dictionary terms in discussing this subject. The meaning of love is far beyond the grasp of lexicography or the science of language. To be sure, love is an affection of the heart excited by that which delights or that which commands admiration, but this severely plain definition does not begin to describe the great, mysterious passion that sets the heart on fire, bewilders the brain, and so often consumes the whole being of the one who loves.

The first three pictures in this book illustrate in concrete form the popular idea of love. The first represents it as ''The Misery of One" — the man loves, but the woman does not; Cupid, the god of love, is plying his art upon the woman, seeking to turn her heart to the man who loves her. The second represents love as "The Bliss of Two" — the same two ; Cupid, having succeeded in his work, is standing off in joyful triumph over the result. The third represents love as "The Torment of Three," another man having divided the affections of the woman and plunged all three into the torture of conflicting emotions, while Cupid, having flung away his bow and arrows, gives up the job and views it with grief and despair.

The apostle John, the loving disciple, grasped the

Love — What is it ?

conception of love's infinitude when he said: "God is love." Tis true indeed that God is love, and hence the spiritual atmosphere of the universe is love, filling all space, and comprehending the essence of all creation; the light of the stars, the verdure of the woods, the beauty and fragrance of the flowers, the warmth and glow of the sun, the music of the spheres, the smiles and voices of nature, the thrill and throb of universal life, joy, and happiness, and even the glory and ecstasy of heaven itself.

It would require a power of vision such as is given by the telescope in Lick Observatory, which compasses huge Jupiter, measures the bands of Orion, brings down far-off Neptune, gathers the multitudinous stars, and sweeps over the nebulous fields of the Milky Way, to give a glimpse of the stupendous proportions of love, the definition of God, and the essence of his created universe. We see it in the harmony and sport of the ten thousand animalcules that "live and move and have their being" in a drop of water — a little word of peace and joy unto themselves. We discover it in the affection, sympathy, and order of insect life. We behold it in the instinct and relationship of the animal creation. It swims in the ocean, flies in the air, and walks upon the earth, in every form and fashion of vital existence. In man it reaches its highest exemplification.

There is a sort of scientific analysis of love which makes it consist in an approbation of and inclination toward an object that appears to us good, as follows:

i. Esteem, arising from the mere consideration of some excellency in an object.

2. Benevolence, which is an inclination to seek the welfare and happiness of any person or thing.

3. Complacence, which arises from the consideration of an object agreeable to us and intended to afford us pleasure.

4. Compassion, arising from the spirit of mercy, which seeks to redeem us from sin and save us from misery. "Pity is akin to love/'

5. Gratitude, arising from a sense of indebtedness to others for kindness and favors bestowed.

We might add to this analysis, but I shall leave it to the philosopher and the theologian to resolve love into all its elements and properties, for the gratification of the scientific or religious taste, according to the logic of love. Like all other subjects, it is susceptible of scientific definition and statement; but I would rather look at the thing itself, in its synthetic and concrete form. What is it? How does it look? How does it feel ? What does it do ?

Love is a dynamic force of high activity, and sometimes is accompanied by great explosive energy. It is the great revolutionary power that changes the order of things for the better. Men may think, propose, and plan until the end of time and yet accomplish little unless love impels their actions or projects the desired results. Neither cold reason nor clear judgment, aided by all the self-determination and ambition of which man might be possessed, ever accomplished anything truly great or truly good until fired and enthused and quickened by the spark and spirit and vitality of love. Fear and necessity are often tremendous motives to action and achievement, but without love they lose their force in the face of difficulties and continued opposition. The fear of God and the knowledge of the need of redemption from sin are the beginning of wisdom in religion, but love is the middle, the end, and the life of it. There may be loveless marriages, loveless professions, loveless ambitions, loveless businesses, and loveless lives; but they are heartless, aimless, profitless, unsuccessful.

As a dynamic force, this mighty passion has made the world what it is — good and great. The love of money makes the millionaire; the love of fame makes the hero ; the love of power, the ruler ; the love of learning, the scholar; the love of country, the patriot and the great nation; the love of Christ makes the Christian and a great Christianity. Ideas, theories, systems, schemes, efforts, energy, and volition die with their birth, if the dynamics of some sort of love is not under or within them. Hate, envy, and jealousy have much to do with the thought and actions of men ; but, with all the gigantic powers of mind and heart they may employ, they are only destructive, and leave on the world no permanent impress. Selfishness and ambition have designed and accomplished vast results in many spheres of human life; but nothing save true love ever has left to the ages anything worth having.

Again, love is electro-magnetic. Every heart is a storage battery which holds, with tremendous voltage, this mysterious power. Some possess it in greater measure than others, but all have it. According to its degree of power, it is manifest in the touch of a loving hand, the glance of a loving eye, the glow of a loving smile, the thrill of a loving life, the throb of a loving heart; and who can resist or fail to feel its power? It molds the life and character of a child; it subdues and conquers the wild animal; it rouses the young lover into ecstasy; it draws the charmed circle around the family fireside; it links two hearts with the bonds of lasting friendship; it binds society together with the chain of confidence and fraternity; it connects the sundered poles of peace by its universal current of sympathy; it restores the equilibrium of elements jarred by the convulsions and revolutions which sometimes break up the relations of society — ever bringing order out of confusion, purity out of corruption, and peace and calm out of the war and storm attendant upon human change and progress.

Love is often thunder and lightning! "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth !" The father who spares the rod spoils the child; it is love that applies the rod when necessary, although the child usually does not think this. It is love that opens the ulcer, to relieve it of its corruption ; cuts off the limb, lest it kill the body ; prunes the vine, that it bear more fruit ; raises the tempest to purify the atmosphere. It is a dove in gentleness and a lamb in meekness ; but it has the courage of a lion in duty, or distress, or conflict. Woe to the elements of wrong and error when they get in the path of revolutionizing and conquering love! Love is neither coward nor weakling, and it will go into the flames for its darling, or burn at the stake for its principle, or sound the tocsin of war for its honor and its rights.

Love is light. It clothes the sun with its ineffable glory, robes the moon in her pale splendor, and puts the twinkle in all the stars ; and wherever the light of truth and righteousness, virtue and honor, goodness and beauty, shines, love is the substance of the illumination. Take away love, and there would be no moral light in the world. There could be genius and intellect, beauty and symmetry, form and fashion, polish of culture and purity of life ; but without love all would be as the glow of crystal or the glitter of ice.

Well has Drummond called it "the greatest thing in the world." Shakespeare truly has written,

There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned;

and I might add, so, too, of the love that can be defined.

Perhaps the best way to understand the meaning of love, especially within the pale of Christianity, is to look at its achievements. Christ is the incarnation and impersonation of love divine, and true Christianity its highest illustration. Love is the very genius of Christianity. It houses the poor, feeds the hungry, shields the widow and orphan, supports the aged, educates the ignorant, comforts the sorrowing, gives refuge to the fallen, and in a thousand ways organizes and sustains the charities which are the pride and glory of our civilization and of that religion revealed by the Master — the Prince of Peace and the Embodiment of Love. Herein we behold the definition of "infinite love, far too big for words."

As one has quaintly written:

Could I with ink the ocean fill,

Were the whole earth of parchment made, Were every blade of grass a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade — To write the love of God above

Would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though spread from sky to sky.

E have before us here an Italian shepherd and shepherdess — the most passionate of lovers — in the sweet converse of young affection — he a-wooing and she a-listening. He has left his flock on the other side of the river to take care of itself, and tied his boat to the shore ; she sits pensive and forgetful of her own flock, while he pours with eloquence the story of his devotion into her ready ear.

Fundamental to every form of love in nature is love between the sexes. "Love, courtship, and marriage" is the usual way of putting it. In other words, we might call it "sweetheart love," which every man and woman who have possessed the passion understand, but may not be able to define. It began with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and after the love of God this was the first form of love known to the world. I imagine that they were the most handsome, most lovable and loving couple that ever lived. They were made expressly for each other, fashioned in all the beauty and perfection of physical manhood and womanhood, without any defects whatsoever until their fall, simply reveling in the purity and holiness of their affectional nature. Until Eve came Adam was alone in the beautiful garden, the monarch of all he surveyed, with no companionship except the animals and other forms of nature with which he communed. 'Tis a fact, he saw (26)

Sweetheart Love.

and talked, at times, with God; but he must have felt the loneliness of his individuality — without a likeness or counterpart. God might have made another man to keep him company, but the relation of two men in perpetual companionship, however sweet, would never be satisfactory, and I will venture to say that Adam was instinctively longing for a helpmeet as the counterpart and complement of his half-made being. He saw that the birds, the fishes, and the animals had mates; and if he did not fully know and realize what he lacked in being and happiness, God knew what was best for him and the world, and soon supplied the deficiency.

I wonder how Adam felt when he woke from that deep sleep with a rib gone, finding it transformed into the most beautiful and loving woman, standing before him. He needed, perhaps, no introduction. The situation was not at all embarrassing, and was readily understood. Adam naturally saw what his soul was looking for; and Eve, though just originated and arrived upon the scene, did not have to be told what she was for. Love talked to love at first sight, as often since; and while the conversation was brief, the purpose of the hour and the occasion was as transparent as glass. They met, they kissed, they embraced — I imagine — and God united in the holy bonds of matrimony the first created pair. That was the happiest day in Adam's life, and how they spent their honeymoon, in the most felicitous delight in each other's presence and companionship, none but God could tell. It lasted, doubtless in all the perfection of unity, love, and joy, until the Devil got into the garden and sin entered the hearts of the innocent pair. From that time forth shame and sorrow flung their black pall over the marital felicity of the most blessed union that ever characterized two hearts and lives, and brought upon us all our woe.

Perhaps when beautiful Eden was lost, and Adam and Eve had to begin work for a living, they loved each other more rationally than before. Two sweet children were born to them, and though when grown up one killed the other that did not stop the business. Even the murderer got married. Nothing can stop love, courtship, and marriage. We are so born, and men and women will love and marry, even if confronted with starvation. I sometimes marry couples without any visible means of support; and the only answer to the inquiry as to the propriety of such a course is that they love each other, and can't help it. Some marry almost in rags, and afterwards live in poverty, with a house full of children; but many of the sublimest instances of love and devotion in the marriage relation are seen amid such surroundings. This sweetheart love, which results in the conjugal relation and life, is no respecter of persons or circumstances ; and with rich or poor, high or low, wise or ignorant, good or bad, from the hovel to the palace, and from the king to the peasant, Cupid finds constant mischief or good to do.

The love of which we now speak is the most unphilosophic of all the sacred passion. There are few indeed who logically look before they leap into the vortex of marital relations; and even when they do, they are sometimes as much mistaken as those who blindly toy with Cupid's arrows. Love seldom stops for sober reflection. Some who love and court for years are woefully deceived, and some who never stop to think of life or character are happily mated. Some of the purest and noblest people in the world are badly matched, or incapable of great and steadfast devotion; while some of the vilest and meanest are happily mated and unalterably constant in their affection. All rules have their exceptions; nevertheless the rule holds good in general that affinity, congeniality, and equality are essential to true and permanent love in married life.

There are men and women who are the victims of passion without thought, or who go from one object of attraction to another with such changeful ease that the last is always the best. Such people want the ballast of solid and permanent virtue essential to true and lasting love. Beware of the man and the woman who can love one person as well as another, and are ever infatuated with the last they meet. It will be so when married. True and changeless love is virtue itself, the foundation of character; and even when deceived or disappointed, it is loath to surrender the unworthy object of affection. In thousands of instances true love, especially in woman, still clings to the vilest object. The wonder and mystery of love is that, under such conditions, it can maintain its integrity and purity. Perhaps this fact led Shakespeare to say :

Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds.

True love is both a passion and a principle. Some people have the passion in greater degree than the principle; in others the principle predominates over the passion. The passion involves the affectional nature; the principle involves the intellectual and moral nature. Love that constitutes a steady and mighty flame in the heart and life is not only emotional and devoted, but is thoughtful and purposeful. It stands by its object with tenderest consideration and unshaken integrity. When the passion and the principle involved in love are well-balanced, happiness, harmony, and peace attend and bless the life and relationship of the lovers. When passion predominates over principle, love is often hot and heady, and its course may not always run smooth ; when principle predominates over passion, the course may be smooth, but the atmosphere is cooler. Occasionally it is all principle and no passion; and while true to each other, and fast in their relation, such lovers are like the snow that crowns the mountain's top. They walk and talk together more like philosophers than sweethearts, and when married they will be true as steel, and nearly as cold. With such, "love is a science rather than a sentiment ;" and in such love there may be, at least, the strongest and most enduring friendship.

There may be the passion without the principle; but such love seldom or never has the foundation of virtue, and, if it is not base, it is often mad. It is here that lust or blind infatuation enters as the chief element of affection — volatile and capricious because without esteem, and dangerous and deadly because without either honor or judgment. Such love is always wild and ungovernable in pursuit, and usually dies by possession. The more it loves, the readier it is to hate its object when passion is sated. It is amazing to see often how the silly or the base can love each other unto death to-day, and despise each other to-morrow. Not infrequently we hear of the maddened fool, who, in jealousy or disappointment, slays mistress or lover, and then blows out his or her own brains. The cause of such an end lies only in that inordinate and impure form of love which is all of passion and none of principle. Beware of the lover who is seeking only for a woman, not a wife ; for a man, not a husband. Ovid trenchantly says: "Excessive love in loathing ever ends."

There is a difference between the love of man and woman. Lamartine says, "To love in order to be loved in return is man, but to love for the sake of pure loving is the characteristic of an angel;" and this is true of woman. She is more confiding, and often risks everything upon faith in her lover. "The maid that loves," says Young, "goes out to sea upon a shattered plank, and puts her trust in miracles for safety." Byron says:

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; Tis woman's whole existence.