Joy and Strength 09/12
If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself ye do well.
James ii. 8.
DO you feel yourself alone and empty-hearted? Then you have necessity indeed for fortitude and brave endurance, but above all and before all you must get out of your solitude. You cannot command for yourself the love you would gladly receive; it is not in our power to do that; but that noble love which is not asking but giving, — that you can always have. Wherever your life touches another life, there you have-opportunity. To mix with men and women in the ordinary forms of social intercourse becomes a sacred function when one carries into it the true spirit. To give a close, sympathetic attention to every human being we touch; to try to get some sense of how he feels, what he is, what he needs; to make in some degree his interest our own, — that disposition and habit would deliver any one of us from isolation or emptiness.
George S. Merriam.
She [Annie Keary] did not try to set others right; she only listened to and loved and understood her fellow-creatures.
Eliza Keary.
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