Bear in mind, however, that your love and gratitude for them must by
no means be restricted to a sentiment of the heart or an instinct of
nature. Those virtues must find an echo both in your words and
actions. Love founded on sensibility has no signification, if you can
make no sacrifice to obey or please them. Love in man is effective,
and this is why our Lord tells us with regard to the love we owe Him:
_He who loves me keeps my commandments._
To love consists in pleasing him who is loved; it is prefering his
will to our own, his interests to ours; in a word, it is to seek him
rather than attract him; it is to become his property rather than to
appropriate him; it is to forget ourself to think of him. Love lives
upon sacrifices; as the pious author of the Following of Christ says:
_where love is, there is also pain: but love converts that pain
into pleasure._ If this be true of all the affections of the human
heart; what shall we think of the one that we have first felt, and
which in some way forms a part of our very nature?
CHAPTER XX.
MELANCHOLY.
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