“It is a ceaseless hunger and thirst which, turn wherever it will for satisfaction, can find none till it responds to the attracting pull of the eternal being or self from which it came forth. As long as it turns away from the source of its origin it is like a wandering star or a lost meteor until it falls back into the heart of love and yields up its own right to Self-Control. A human spirit is indeed a capacity to love and to respond to love and according to what it chooses or wills to love so will its woe or blessedness be.”

Here is a song of love’s origin:

Love is a glory and a pain,

It is a burning fire!

A flame of life which ne’er again

Can cease to know desire.

For love from the Eternal Flame

Came forth and bears his lovely Name.

Love kindled in a human heart

Is but a single spark

Of love divine—now set apart

And launched into the dark;

It no fulfillment knows nor peace,

Till from its own self-love it cease.

As every spark from love’s own fire

The selfsame nature shares,

It yearns back with intense desire

To him whose Name it bears.

So leaps it forth in love and greets

All other flaming souls it meets.

Yes, oneness is the heart of love,

To burn alone—despair,

One with its source in God above

And all men everywhere.

It burning heavenward wears Christ’s face,

And is on earth his dwelling place.

As soon as this song ended the lovely, but invisible choirs among the aloe trees again began to sing, but in a language which Grace and Glory could scarcely understand, which yet had something strangely and exquisitely familiar about it as of a language heard long, long ago in earliest childhood, then heard no more and long since forgotten. Now, as she heard it again, it stirred in her heart sweet, haunting memories and such poignant nostalgia that the sweetness of it became almost unbearable.

Presently, however, the music of the choirs became softer and sank to a low accompaniment, and then one voice, lovelier than any she had ever heard save that of the King himself, began to sing alone. At first she thought it was an angel, then, perhaps, the first mother of all men; but then, as she caught the words, she understood that it was the voice of the queen herself, the bride of the King of Love.

My bonds are very, very strong,

I never can go free;

To Holy Love I now belong,

And he belongs to me.

And all the power of earth and heaven

Into my Love-chained hands is given.

Controlled by him I have no might

To let Self plan or choose,

But this control is my delight

And freedom I refuse.

The King of Love as Lord I own,

And sit with him upon his throne.