Every well-told parable or fable, every artistically constructed novel or play, makes us take sides with the large-hearted hero against the mean, selfish villain. In the same way Love's formulated laws, showing on what conditions it depends and to what results it leads, convince every one who has the experience by which to interpret them (and only to him who hath experience is interpretation given) that Love is the supreme law of life, and its requirements the right and reasonable conditions of individual and social well-being. II THE FULFILMENT OF LAW THROUGH LOVE Jesus was born in a nation which had developed law to the utmost nicety of detail, and recognised all laws as expressions of the good will of God seeking the welfare of men. Prolonged experiments in living had proved certain kinds of conduct disastrous, and the states of mind corresponding to them, despicable. Law had prohibited this disastrous conduct, and the prophets had denounced these despicable traits. Of course latent in the prohibitions of law was the constitution of the blessed Kingdom that would result if the law were observed; and dimly foreshadowed in the figurative expressions of the prophets was the vision of the glorified human society that would emerge when the despicable traits should be extirpated and the better order introduced. This negative and latent implication of law Jesus developed into Love as the positive and explicit principle of life; and this figuratively foreshadowed prophet's vision He translated into the actual fact of a community united in Love. He fulfilled the law by putting Love in the heart, and fulfilled the prophets by establishing a community based on Love. Jesus taught us to make every human interest we touch as precious as our own, and to treat all persons with whom we deal as members of that beneficent system of mutual good-will which is the Kingdom of Heaven. But the moment we begin to do that, law as law becomes superfluous; for what the law requires is the very thing we most desire to do: prophecy as prophecy is fulfilled; for the best man's heart can dream has come to pass. In the ideal home, between well-married husband and wife, child and parent, brother and sister, this sweet law prevails. In choice circles of intimate friends it is found. Jesus extended this interpretation of others in terms of ourselves, and of both others and self in terms of the system of relations in which both self and others inhere, so as to include all the dealing of official and citizen, teacher and pupil, dealer and customer, employer and employee, man and man. Jesus does not judge us by the formal test of whether we have kept or broken this or that specific commandment, but by the deeper and more searching requirement that our lives shall detract nothing from and add something to the glory of God and the welfare of man.