The love, however, that is so strong to obtain must be no superficial sentiment, but an inward passion of the heart. So long as we live in thought and imagination we are very apt to mistake mere sentiment for love; but the difference will show itself so soon as we begin to act. Sentiment is soon wearied by labor and difficulty in its pursuit of mental attainment, soon disgusted by squalor or offended by ingratitude in its attempts at benevolence, soon discouraged by the hardness of its own heart when it endeavors to acquire self-control, or to gain such virtues as seem in the abstract lovely and delightful. In short, sentiment wants a royal road to whatever it strives to reach. Love, on the contrary, is too much in earnest to be dismayed by any impediment. It will not stop half-way and make excuses for its short-comings. It rests not in its course until it has gained what it seeks; and then it rests not long, for all true love "grows by what it feeds on," and every height of excellence we reach does but enlarge the field of vision and show us new countries to be won. Admitting love to be, indeed, this intense and all-pervading power, and the very life of our souls, the importance of training ourselves to love only that which is pure and true at once becomes manifest. The heights of heaven are not farther from the depths of hell than are the results that come to us if we seek the pure and the true from those which inevitably occur when the choice falls upon the impure and the false. Let no one think to dwell in safety because he has not deliberately said to himself, "I choose the impure and the false"; for if the pure and the true be not deliberately and voluntarily chosen, the heart out of its own inherent selfishness and worldliness will unconsciously sink gradually, but surely, into the impure and the false. There is no half-way resting-place for humanity between good and evil. We are always sinking, unless we are rising; going backward, unless we are pressing forward.