Love is Without Ending

The circumstances and intuitions which necessitate the affirmation, that Love is without beginning, involve also the additional affirmation, that Love is without ending, in other words, it is eternal. And as it has no beginning, and no ending, and thus covers all time; so, looking at it in another aspect, and by means of other processes of thought, such as will easily suggest themselves, we are under the necessity of affirming further that the principle under consideration is a principle without limitation; a principle surmounting the boundaries which might be supposed to stop its progress, and reaching to every place and every object within the realms of actual or possible existence. And this great principle, without beginning and without end, reaching to all objects and living in all events, universal by the same necessities which compel the fact of its eternity, is thus made to stand forth with the same attributes and the same features as the Essential Life. So that we are justified in saying that Life is Love, and Love is Life. And God, who is the embodiment of life, is the embodiment of love; and is what He is, whether He is called God or Life, because He is Love.

— edited from Absolute Religion (1873) Chapter 4.

Love Must be the Constitutive Activity of the Universe

Love, in distinction from the counterfeits of love; we mean that divine love, which “casts out fear,” and which pursues the good of its object for the sake of the good and not for the sake of reward; such love has all the marks or characteristics which have already been ascribed to the Essential Life. It was said of Essential Life that it has no beginning. The same can be said of Love. Looking at love psychologically, and in one of its most distinguishing aspects, it may be described as simply benevolent desire, or the desire of good. And like every other desire, it involves in its very nature and as a part of its nature, a tendency to activity and to practical results. It is essentially a motive power. Now take the universe as the theater of inquiry, and say whether Love, considered as a motive power, has or can have, admits, or can admit, of any active and causative power antecedent to itself. Looking at the question psychologically, it seems to us that only three suppositions are possible in the case; first, indifference, which is not life, but the negation of life; second, the desire of evil, which, if it be admitted as the primal activity, would annihilate God, and enthrone Satan; and third, the desire of good, which is only another name for Love.

Now apply this analysis to God. If God exists at all, he exists as Essential Life. As essential life, He is essential activity; and that, too, without a beginning of such activity. Forever, and as a part of his nature, He must have had in himself a motivity, a principle of action. That principle of activity, could not have been indifference; for that would be a contradiction in terms. It could not be the desire of evil, for that would constitute a satanic Infinite. On the only remaining supposition, it must have been the desire of good or love. Love therefore, is, and, from the nature of the case, must be, the constitutive activity of the universe. And being central in the infinite nature, we may say of it as we say of God, it is without beginning; and, therefore it is, and must be to that extent, the same with the Essential Life of things.

— edited from Absolute Religion (1873), Chapter 4.