It is always true, even though every single circumstance on the pathway of life may at times appear to contradict it. For Love himself is the Judge who knows perfectly well what is needed next in the experience of every one of his creatures in order to bring them into a fuller experience of his goodness and his love. It is true for those who are already following him and just as true for those who are still fleeing from him. For he is the Great Physician who prescribes according to the need and condition of every soul who is suffering from the disease of sin as well as for those who are already recovering from it. All the “judgments” of love are, in fact, the wise prescriptions which are intended to bring about the healing of his creatures. It is the Goodness of Love for “he woundeth and his hands make whole.”

The woods of cinnamon trees had grown very still while the King was speaking. Not a breath of wind stirred among the branches, not a leaf moved. The tree beneath which they were sitting was as still as the rest. Long strips of its bark had been peeled away by some hand, disclosing a gaping wound through which the rich, blood-hued inner bark was visible, and from this wound in the side of the tree there exuded into the warm summer air a fragrant perfume so sweet and strengthening that Grace and Glory felt as though she were breathing in a life-giving tonic. In her heart awoke a great desire that her life also might yield the true spice of Goodness and, like the trees growing around her, she might be “made perfect,” if need be, even through suffering just as the King of Love who sat beside her had also “learned obedience by the things that he suffered.” As if in answer both to the prayer and the shrinking in her heart as she thought of what it might mean to have it answered, the King sang this song:

Love is the Judge—what comfort this

O shrinking heart to thee,

Thou art dear workmanship of his,

And perfect thou must be.

He knows each lesson thou must learn;

How long to let the fire burn.

He does not judge by outward sign,

By failure, not by sin,

Each secret heart response of thine

Each weak attempt to win;

He weighs it all, nor doth forget

The least temptation thou hast met.

He knows thy blemishes and how

To purge away the dross,

Not overlong will he allow

The anguish of thy cross.

Love is the Judge, and he doth see

The surest way to perfect thee.

Thou can’st not perish if thou wilt

But turn thee to the light,

Love bleeds with thee in all thy guilt

And waits to set thee right.

Love means to save sin’s outcasts lost,

And cares not at what awful cost.