to life again it might as well be darkness. If it did not throw itself full into your faces, O men and women, and disclose you to yourselves, and disclose love to itself, and disclose the vast peoples to themselves, and disclose all the mistakes to themselves, and disclose all the dividing creeds and industries to themselves: oh! if my light did not disclose everything to itself so that it might light everything farther to its ineffable consequence, then it might as well be darkness. O, it might as well be darkness. But my light is competent. It is enough for everywhere and enough for all. It lights everything to itself. It lights the man to the woman and the woman to the man and the few to many and many to all and all to the one again. My light might as well be darkness if it fails to light everything to itself and all to everything in the storm and calm of its masterful plenty. When I look into the faces of men and women. Do you know what it means to say love? to be always and only saying love every day every where? You think it's easy to say love but hard to say hate: I say no: love is hardest of all to say: For sometimes you must say love with a knife: sometimes with the cruelest word you know: Saying love is not saying soft things sweetly to make your lover comfortable: far from that: Saying love is often to say things that cut and rend: things that may even destroy: do you hear? LOVING IS THE ONLY LIFE Loving is the only life. Living must give us time for life. It is not enough to fill your lungs with air. You must fill your lungs with life. The heart must not only beat. It must beat the dance of life. It is not important to live so many years. It is important to live so much life. You have dollars. But have you life? You write something. People admire you. You are famous for some reason or other. That is all very great. But there is something beyond. Life is beyond. Eating and sleeping is not life. Love alone is life. You are brilliant. You perform in the center of the stage. But that is not life. Lending money at percents. Making profits. Getting a house full of decorations. That is not life. A man may have all that and more and be stone dead. I pass you on the street. You look empty. You are hungry. You ache and strain for something. What is it you yet need? You who have so much. You who seem to have all the world. You to whose door all ships seem to sail and into whose treasury all cargoes seem to be unloaded. You cast upon me such a vacant look. You have not found out that your wealth is not life. You have not consciously said that to yourself. But your body has found it out. Your soul has found it out. You have power. You can draw a big check. You are admitted anywhere. You are welcome to interrupt the world at its devotions. Nobody would think of closing you out. The state, the church, open when you appear, before you say a word. Yet you cast that