Love More Effective Than Logic in Winning Hearts

Let all your things be done with agape (love). Love proves far more effective than logic in attaining the best ends. Logic may convince the understanding and leave the heart unchanged, but love will win the heart, and with that gained, the understanding will usually soon yield.

The difference resembles a mallet and the sun reducing ice to water. The mallet may break ice into particles, yet each remains frozen. The sun's heat melts ice entirely into fluid, impregnating it with warmth so thoroughly that while that warmth continues, water cannot resume its icy condition.

So it is with changing opinions and reforming habits. Arguments accomplish little without loving disposition behind them. Opinions, after mere argumentation, remain unchanged or assume another false complexion; broken habits soon resume their wonted patterns. But when love prevails—eyes looking it, face beaming it, words expressing it, whole demeanor demonstrating it—the citadel of opinion melts before the loving assault, and the heart becomes ablaze with sacred glow.

Love and logic must go hand in hand in seeking the regeneration of the world. Examine your motive while at work. When a landscape painter loves hills and trees, when a figure painter loves human beauty and soul, when one loves the petal and limb—then the spirit rests upon you. But if petty self-complacency, trust in precepts alone, or avarice drives you, sturdy industry cannot produce the same transformation.