Once, on the errands of his mercy bent,
Buddha, the holy and benevolent,
Met a fell monster, huge and fierce of look,
Whose awful voice the hills and forests shook.
"O son of peace!" the giant cried, "thy fate
Is sealed at last, and love shall yield to hate."
The unarmed Buddha, looking, with no trace
Of fear or anger, in the monster's face,
In pity said: "Poor friend, even thee I love."
Lo! as he spake, the sky-tall terror sank
To hand-breadth size; the huge abhorrence shrank
Into the form and fashion of a dove;
And where the thunder of its rage was heard,
Circling above him, sweetly sang the bird:
"Hate hath no harm for love," so ran the song.
"And peace unweaponed conquers every wrong!"
—George Dana Boardman.
(1906)
Love Dissolving Doubts—See Doubts, Dissolving.
LOVE DRIVING OUT FEAR
Mr. Robert E. Speer stopt from a British
India steamer at Muscat to visit Rev. Peter
Zwemer, who was working there alone. Mr.
Zwemer took his visitor up to his house,
where, he said, his family were staying.
There, sitting on benches about the room,
were eighteen little black boys. They had
been rescued from a slave-ship that had been
coming up the eastern coast of Arabia with
those little fellows, to be sold on the date
plantations along the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers. The British consul had seized them
from the traders, and Mr. Zwemer had undertaken
to keep them until they were
eighteen years old, when they would be
given their manumission papers.
"When I got them," said Mr. Zwemer, "the whole eighteen huddled together in the middle of the floor, like jack-rabbits, and every time I came close, they huddled a little nearer. They mistrusted every one. On each little cheek-bone was the brand of the slave's iron, and for months and months they had known nothing but hatred and beatings, and had been shut down in the hold of the slave-ship, in order that they might make no noise and betray their presence."
As Mr. Speer saw them they looked happy and confident, and they sang for him, "Jesus loves me, this I know," looking as if the realization that all their blessings had come from that divine Source had already sunk deep into their hearts. (Text.)
(1907)
LOVE, FILIAL
A boy of thirteen was often brought to
Judge Lindsey's Juvenile Court in Denver,
charged with truancy. Notwithstanding the
judge admonished him many times, it did
not seem to do him any good. The teacher
kept writing, "Tim will stay out of school
to work."
Once, when reproving him, the judge told him that there would be time enough to work when he was a man. "My father was a man," replied the boy, "and he did not work. He went off and left mother and me. I guess that's what killed her."
Finally, Tim appeared in court one day with a happy face, and pulling a soiled and crumpled paper from his pocket, handed it to the judge. "I'm goin' to remember all the things you told me and I'm goin' to school regular, now I got that done," he said, with some pride. Judge Lindsey examined the paper, which proved to be a receipted bill, and found that, little by little, Tim had paid fifty dollars for a headstone at his mother's grave.
"My boy, is that what you've been doing all these months?"
"I wanted her to have a monument, judge." Tim furtively wiped away the moisture in his eyes. "She done a lot for me; that's all I could do for her now."
(1908)
LOVE IN A NAME
James Hargreaves, sitting alone there in
his little house in Yorkshire, finding that he
could not get enough from the spinners of
cotton to supply his wants as a weaver, cast
about for a way to spin faster. After many
weary days, and weeks, and months, he
found out a method by which he could spin
eight threads in the same time that one had
previously been spun; and being asked for
a name for the instrument, he looked lovingly
upon his wife, and said: "We'll call it
Jenny"; and the modest Jenny has come
down to posterity, and will go to remotest
generations with the name of the "Spinning
Jenny."—George Dawson.
(1909)
