Love, like gnosis, is in its essence a divine gift, not anything that can be acquired. “If the whole world wished to attract love, they could not; and if they made the utmost efforts to repel it, they could not.” Those who love God are those whom God loves. “I fancied that I loved Him,” said Bāyazīd, “but on consideration I saw that His love preceded mine.” Junayd defined love as the substitution of the qualities of the Beloved for the qualities of the lover. In other words, love signifies the passing-away of the individual self; it is an uncontrollable rapture, a God-sent grace which must be sought by ardent prayer and aspiration. “O Thou in whose bat well-curved my heart like a ball is laid, Nor ever a hairbreadth swerved from Thy bidding nor disobeyed, I have washed mine outward clean, the water I drew and poured; Mine inward is Thy demesne--do Thou keep it stainless, Lord!” Jalāluddīn teaches that man’s love is really the effect of God’s love by means of an apologue. One night a certain devotee was praying aloud, when Satan appeared to him and said: “How long wilt thou cry, ‘O Allah’? Be quiet, for thou wilt get no answer.” The devotee hung his head in silence. After a little while he had a vision of the prophet Khadir, who said to him, “Ah, why hast thou ceased to call on God?” “Because the answer ‘Here am I’ came not,” he replied. Khadir said, “God hath ordered me to go to thee and say this: “‘Was it not I that summoned thee to service? Did not I make thee busy with My name? Thy calling “Allah!” _was_ My “Here am I,” Thy yearning pain My messenger to thee. Of all those tears and cries and supplications I was the magnet, and I gave them wings.’” Divine love is beyond description, yet its signs are manifest. Sarī al-Saqatī questioned Junayd concerning the nature of love. “Some say,” he answered, “that it is a state of concord, and some say that it is altruism, and some say that it is so-and-so.” Sarī took hold of the skin on his forearm and pulled it, but it would not stretch; then he said, “I swear by the glory of God, were I to say that this skin hath shrivelled on this bone for love of Him, I should be telling the truth.” Thereupon he fainted away, and his face became like a shining moon.