Love Expands Itself

It is the nature of true love to react upon and to expand itself. It is satisfied with nothing but constant increase. It ever desires to love more; and is ever enlarging its own capability of loving. It can, therefore, rest firmly and quietly, and with entire satisfaction, only in an object. which has capacity and fulness enough to meet this tendency. As in God there is not only infinity of being but infinite loveliness, so the principle of love in men, though it should expand and increase itself through all eternity, will find in Him all its wants supplied. No other object can supply them; and it seeks no other. But in God it finds all that it needs. It has a home there, like no other home. It has no fear of failure in the beloved object; it has no desire of change. It exults triumphantly, and with ever increasing exultation, in the midst of the glories of the Infinite Mind. This is the true point of rest; the soul's eternal rock; the everlasting center; and it can be no where else.

— adapted from The Interior or Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 12.