Drummond tells us that ’Love—­is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new commandment for keeping all the old commandments, Christ’s one secret of the Christian life.’  And another writer says,—­’You are a personality only as your heart lives, and the heart lives only as it loves.  Love is all action, therefore the amount of your active love measures the size of your personal heart.’”

“Love has been defined as ‘the desire to bless.’  That is like divine love, for there can be no self thought in God.  God’s love is over all and above all, but when our love responds to his, his love becomes to us a personal experience.  Love can reach down when in loving trust we reach up.  Love is like the seed.  It manifests no life until it begins to grow.  Like the seed it must rise out of the dark ground into the light of heaven,—­out of self thought into God.  God’s love to us is like the sunlight.  We can make it our own only by being in it, if we try to shut up the sunlight, we shut it out.  We forget to do wrong when loving God.  As we love God, the love we feel for him goes out to others.”

Evadne sighed.  “You make it seem a wonderful thing to be a Christian,” she said.

“To be a Christian, little one, Andrew Murray tells us, ’just means to have Christ’s love.’  Real love means giving always, of our best.”

[Illustration:  THE SILENT FIGURE WITH THE AWFUL ENTREATY IN ITS STARING EYES]

God so loved that he gave his Son, the essence of himself.  Jesus gave his life, not only in the final agony of the crucifixion, but all through the beautiful years of ministry in Nazareth and Galilee.  There is a truer giving than of our temporal goods.  Our friends, if they really love us, want most of all what we can give them of ourselves.  It is those who give themselves to the world’s need who come nearest to the divine pattern Christ has set for us to copy, and, if we truly love him, we shall want not his gifts but himself.

“People seek after holy living instead of perfect loving, they do not realize that we can be truly holy only as we love, for ’love is the great reality of the spiritual world.’”

Evadne laid her cheek caressingly against Mrs. Everidge’s.  “If it were only you, dear, how delightfully easy it would be, but do you suppose it is possible for me to love Aunt Kate and Isabelle?”

“Yes, dear child, with the love of God.”

“You can’t imagine how I dread the idea of going back!” Evadne said with a sigh.  “This summer has been like a lovely dream.  How shall I endure the cold reality of my waking?”

“Where is your joy, little one?”

“Joy, Aunt Marthe!” exclaimed Evadne drearily, “why, I haven’t got any apart from you.  Just the mere thought of the separation makes my heart ache.”