The fact of love abiding, or, perhaps more correctly, the question of whether it really abides in this or that case, or whether it ceases: is something which occupies the thoughts of men in such manifold ways, is so frequently the subject of their conversation, and very frequently the principal content of all their poets’ works. It is regarded as praiseworthy that love abides, but as unworthy that it does not last, that it ceases, that it changes. Only the first is love; the other seems, because of the change, not to be love—and consequently not to have been love. The facts are these, one cannot cease to be loving; if one is in truth loving, one remains so; if one ceases to be loving, then one was not loving. Ceasing to love has therefore, in relation to love, a retroactive power. Moreover, I can never weary of saying this and of demonstrating it: wherever there is love, there is something infinitely profound. For instance, a man may have had money, and when he no longer has it, it still remains entirely true that he had had money. But when one ceases to be loving, he has never been loving. What is still so gentle as love, and what so strict, so jealous for itself, so chastening as love!

Furthermore! If then love ceases, if in the love, the friendship, in short, in the affectionate relation between two, something comes between them so love ceases: then there takes place, as we say, a breach between these two. Love was the connection, was in good understanding between them; then when something comes between them, then is the love displaced, it ceases, the connection between them is broken, and the breach effects a separation between them. Consequently there Is a breach. Christianity, however, does not know this manner of speaking, does not understand it, does not wish to understand it. If one speaks about there being a breach, this is because one believes that love is a relation only between two, instead of its being a relation between three, as was shown. This talk about there being a breach between the two is much too thoughtless; it gives the impression of the love-relationship being merely a matter between these two, as if there were no third party whom it concerned. If then the two are agreed about breaking with each other, there would consequently be no one to object to it. Again, because these two break with each other, it does not follow that these same two might not have affection for others; hence they retain their loving attributes, but their love now applies only in relation to others. Again, the one guilty of causing the breach would have the upper hand, and the innocent one would be defenseless. Still it would be pitiful for an innocent person to be the weaker; it certainly is this way in this world, but eternally understood it can never be this way. Therefore what does Christianity do? Its earnestness immediately fixes the attention of eternity upon the individual, upon each of the two. Just as the two clung to each other in love, each one especially clings in himself to “love.” Now that does not simply go out with the breach. Before it comes to the breach, before one came to break his love-relationship with the other, he must first have fallen away from “love.” This is the important thing; therefore Christianity does not speak of the breach between the two, but always only about what the individual can do who falls away from “love.” A breach between two smacks too much of business in the temporal existence, as if then the matter were not so dangerous; but to fall away from “love,” this expression has the seriousness of eternity. Lo, now everything is in order; now eternity can maintain discipline and order; now will the innocent sufferer in and through the breach, yet become the stronger, if he, too, does not fall away from “love.” If love were solely a relationship between two, then the one would constantly be in the other’s power, insofar as the other were an unprincipled man who wished to dissolve the relationship. When a relationship is only between two, then one constantly dominates the relationship through being able to break it; for as soon as one has broken it, the relationship is broken. But when there are three, then one alone cannot do it. The third, as we said, is “love” itself, to whom in the breach the. innocent sufferer can cling, so that the breach has no power over him. Nor will the guilty be able to flatter himself on making a good bargain in getting out of the affair; for to fall away from “love,” that is certainly the dearest possible price; it has an earnestness different from the hasty breaking with a particular man—and then in other respects being a good and loving man in every way. But the true lover never falls away from “love”; therefore for him there can never come a breach; for love abides. Still in a relationship between two, can one prevent the breach if the other breaks it? It must indeed seem that one of the two is sufficient to break the relationship, and if it is broken, then there is a breach. In a certain sense this is indeed true, but if the lover still does not fall away from “love,” he can prevent the breach, he can effect the miraculous; for if he abides, the breach can never really be brought about. Through abiding (and in this abiding the lover is in a covenant with the eternal) he retains superiority over the past, so he transforms what in the past and through it, is a breach, into a possible future relationship. If viewed in connection with the past, the breach becomes with every day and with every year clearer and clearer; but the lover who abides, belongs, through abiding, to the future, to the eternal, and from the viewpoint of the future the breach is not a breach; on the contrary, it is a possibility. But to that the forces of eternity belong; and therefore the lover who abides, must abide in “love,” otherwise the past, nevertheless, gradually acquires power, and then gradually the breach becomes evident. Oh, and to this, belong the powers of eternity, in the decisive moment, immediately to transform the past into the future! Yet it has this power of abiding. How shall I now describe this work of love? Oh, that T might be inexhaustible in describing what is so indescribably joyous, and so edifying to consider!

So, then, a breach took place between the two; it was a misunderstanding, yet the one broke the relationship. But the lover says, “I abide” —so there is still no breach. Imagine a compound word, the last word is missing; there is only the first word and the hyphen (for the one who breaks the relationship can still not take the hyphen with him, the lover retains the hyphen, as naturally belonging to him), consequently imagine the first word of a compound word and the hyphen, and imagine that you know nothing further of what belongs with it: what will you say then? You will say the word is not finished, that something is missing. So with the lover. That it came to a breach cannot be plainly seen, it can only be known by an understanding of the past. But the lover will not know the past, for he abides; and abiding is in the direction of the future. Hence the lover expresses the fact that the relationship, which the other calls a breach, is a relationship which is not yet finished. But because something is lacking, it is not therefore yet a breach. It depends, consequently, on how the relationship is regarded; and the lover, he abides. So if it then came to a breach, it was a dispute which separated the two; yet if one broke it, he said, “It is all finished between us.” But the lover abides, he says, “It is not finished between us; we are still midway in the sentence, it is only the sentence which is not finished” Is this not true? What is the difference between a fragment and an unfinished sentence? In order to call something a fragment, one must know that there is nothing more to come; if one knows nothing about it, then one says that the sentence is not yet finished. From the standpoint of the past, that it is decided that there is no more to come, we say, “Tt is a broken-off fragment.” As concerns the future, waiting for the next, we say, “The sentence is not finished, something is still lacking” So if it then came to a breach, it would be dejection, coldness, indifference, which separated them; yet if one caused the breach, he says, “I no longer talk with that man, I do not even see him.” But the lover says, “I abide, so we shall still talk with each other, for in conversation silence is sometimes part of it.” Is this not true? But suppose it was now three years since they last talked together. Behold, it happens here again,

That it was three years ago, one can only know by an understanding of the past; but the lover who each day renews himself through the eternal and abides, over him the past has no power. If you saw two men sitting silently side by side, and you knew nothing else about them, would you infer that it was three years since they had talked with each other? Can anyone determine how long the silence must continue before a man can say, “Now there is no more conversation”? And if one can determine that, can one still know in the particular case, except in the sense of what was past, whether it was true, for time must certainly have elapsed? But the lover who abides constantly extricates himself from his knowledge of the past; he knows no past, he waits only on the future. Is the dancing interrupted because one dancer has gone away? In a certain sense. But if the other one continues to stand in the position which expresses the bowing toward one who is not seen, and if you know nothing about the past: then you will say, “Now the dancing ought to begin, if only the other would come for whom they are waiting.” Do away with the past; drown it in the oblivion of eternity through lovingly abiding: then is the end the beginning, and there is no breach!

If the faithless lover has deserted the maiden, but she in the darkening afterglow sits each evening by the window and waits, so she exclaims every evening: “Now he is coming, he is coming right away’; it looks every evening as if there had been no breach, for she abides. That she has sat thus every evening for three years, that she does not say on the individual evenings; therefore the past does not discover it, as little as she herself is aware of it, if she really does abide in love. Still, perhaps the maiden really loved herself. She desired union with the beloved for her own sake; it was her sole desire; her soul was at one with her desire. In gratitude for its fulfillment she would do everything to make the life of the beloved as beautiful as possible; yes, it is true, but still, still it was for her own sake that she desired the union. If this is true, if she becomes weary, if she adverts to the past, to the length of time—then she no longer sits at the window, she expresses the fact that there is a breach; but love abides.

So then it came to a breach, whatever the occasion was; the one broke the relationship; it was terrible, hate, everlasting, unforgiving hate, would for the future fill his soul: “I will never look at this man again, our ways are forever separated, the abysmal depths of hate lie between us.” He concedes certainly that inasmuch as life is a way, they are on the way together, but not in any other sense; he carefully avoids allowing his path to cross the path of the one he hates; the world is almost too small to hold them both; it is agony to him to breathe the same air as the other does; he shudders at the thought that eternity must hold them both. But the lover abides. “I abide,” he says, “so we are still on the way together.” Is this not so? When two balls (as everyone can prove for himself) strike together, so that by repulsion one takes the other with it in its course, are they not then on the way together? That it happened through repulsion is not seen, that is something in the past which has to be known. But the lover does not wish to know the past, he abides; he continues on the way with the one who hates him, so there is consequently no breach.

What wonderful strength does love not have! The most powerful word ever spoken, moreover, the creative word of God, is: “Be.” But the most powerful word any man has uttered is when the true lover says, “I abide.” Reconciled with himself and with his conscience, the friend of God, in a covenant with all good angels the lover walks defenseless in the most terrible war; he says only, “I abide.” And so he truly is the lover, he will yet conquer, will triumph through his abiding, triumph even more gloriously than did that Roman through his hesitation For love’s abiding is in itself far more glorious. So truly he is the lover: there is no misunderstanding save the one that sooner or later must be overcome by his abiding; there is no hate such but that it must at last give up, and give way to his abiding—if not before, then in eternity. Lo, the one who secured for himself another man’s love, and consequently is in possession of it, may every moment be in fear of losing it. But the one who was hated for his love, he is everlastingly certain of gaining love. If time cannot, then will eternity take away the other’s hatred, open his eyes to “love,” and thereby to the love which continued for the whole life, and now abides in eternity. So love never fails—it abides.

Love Abideth—it Never Fails

That a certain natural, good disposition, a certain benevolent sympathy and helpfulness, which we gratefully appreciate, still has to spend some time in affectionately waiting—that it becomes weary in the course of time, or when it progresses so slowly and consequently over a long period of time: is only too certain. The long process of time is certainly the exigency which causes most people to liquidate their estates. In the commercial world it generally happens that a house fails because suddenly there is all at once a great run on it; but in the spiritual world it is the long time which makes away with so many. Men have spiritual strength enough for a moment, but in the long run, on the contrary, they become irresponsible. Yet love abides. Oh, how well do not the poet and the novelist know how to describe the mutability of everything, to show the power of time over all things which existed in time, over the greatest, the mightiest, the most glorious achievements, over the wonders of the world, which in time became almost unrecognizable ruins; over the most immortal names, which in time ended in the vagueness of legends!

But cannot something happen to love now while it abides, so that although it abides it is transformed in time, but yet in such a way that this transformation is not its fault but is something suffered? Consequently the relationship would be: love abides, no circumstance alters it or forces it to give itself up, yet it is transformed in a change which we call decrepitude, and that although we may say about this same love, that it never failed.

Let us for a moment speak about that which occupies men so much, about earthly love, or about that maiden, who according to the poet’s tale, sits in the afterglow of evening by the window, and waits for her beloved; alas, while “time comes and time goes.” Now it is something long past, for it happened, says the poet, “in a long-vanished age.” The maiden did not mark how time came and went, while she waited—and while time marked her. Ordinarily we merely say that time passes; oh, it passes so swiftly for the happy, so indescribably slowly for the sorrowing! Or we say that “time is coming.” Oh, it comes so slowly for the hoping, only too swiftly for the fearful. But here the poet says, and excellently, that time comes and time goes, for he wishes to describe the expectant; and for such a one it neither merely goes nor merely comes, it comes and goes. Out of sympathy for the waiting girl time, as it were, undertook to do what the faithless lover should have done. Then when the time came when “he” ought to have come, then time came, but “he” did not come; so time went again, until the time came when it was time that “he” should come who did not come. And thus time soothed the waiting maiden by coming and going, until, rocked by this movement, she rested in her expectation. Wonderful! One would think that expectation would be more apt to keep a man awake, yet expectation, when one resigns himself to it, is so soothing, and is it not then wonderful! For if you had lain down to sleep, and then suddenly while you slept a powerful fountain had begun its lofty play, you would suddenly wake up startled. But if you lie down to rest by a fountain, you never sleep more soundly, more sweetly, more refreshingly, more deliciously, than when soothed by the rippling play of this fountain.

Consequently time came and time went; the girl truly did not fall away from her love, but yet she fell away—ifor it was not time which vanished, no, it came and went, but the maiden wasted away. Honor to her steadfast soul! She, too, has honor, the greatest human honor: that a poet has celebrated her in his songs, not as an occasional-poet does for money, not because a girl was from a distinguished family, not because the poet had perhaps known her. No, her name is unknown, it was only her beautiful devotion which inspired the true poet. Let us never forget that thus to remain faithful to her love is a noble, womanly act, a great and glorious deed. As long as there lives a poet she will be highly honored in the world, despite all talk about a busy domestic life; and if the world becomes so wretched that a poet no longer exists, then will the race learn to despair over having no poet, and then a poet will again come who will do her honor.

She wasted away—a sacrifice to love. And yet this is precisely the highest that can be said of any man: he is sacrificed. The problem is only about whether that for which he was sacrificed, was the highest. But the fact of being sacrificed is and remains as long as the world remains a world, eternally understood, a far greater achievement than the fact of triumphing. For the world truly is not so perfect, so the fact of triumphing in the world, precisely through identification with the world, has a serious admixture of the world’s paltriness. That is, triumphing in the world is like becoming something great in the world; it is as a rule a dubious matter to become something great in the world, for the world is not so excellent that its judgment about greatness would have great significance—except as an unconscious sarcasm.

Hence the maiden is sacrificed to love. Alas, but earthly love is not in the highest sense love, and not the highest love: lo, therefore she faded away—Iloving in death as she had been in life, but mark, that earthly love had been her highest aspiration. And earthly love is a wish for this life; therefore time had power over her, therefore she faded away in love, until it also dwindled away, while she, nevertheless, showed that she had power over time, for she did not herself fall away from her love.

But love abides—it never fails. For in spiritual love itself is the spring which wells up in eternal life. That this lover, too, grows old in years and dies sometime in time, proves nothing, for his love remains eternally young. In his love he does not lay hold on the temporal existence as does earthly love, dependent on the temporal existence; for his love eternity is the true season. When he dies he has simply reached the goal; when he dies it simply shows that he had not waited in vain. Alas, when the young maiden died, we simply said: “Unfortunately it seems that she waited in vain.” And how could the love which abides become infirm? Can then immortality become infirm? But what is it which gives a man immortality, what except the love which abides? For earthly love is of the temporal existence the most beautiful of temporal things, but yet the frail invention of the temporal existence. Therefore there is here a more profound contradiction. There was no fault in the maiden; she was and remained true to her love. Yet her love changed somewhat through the years. This change lies in the nature of the earthly love. The contradiction is then this: that one with the most honest intentions, willing to be sacrificed, cannot in the deepest sense be absolutely steadfast, or abide in what does not itself abide eternally —and earthly love does not do this. Perhaps the girl herself did not understand this connection; but this persistence of the self-contradiction was what made her death sad. That she is sacrificed has not the solemnity of the eternal, and, hence, neither its inspiration nor its elevation, but it has the sadness of the temporal existence, and so it inspires the poet. The young maiden wasted away. Even if “he” had come, consequently had come before her death, it would still have been too late. She remained; but time had weakened her desire, the desire for which she lived, while at the same time the desire consumed her. In the most profound sense, on the contrary, the lover who abides, does not become infirm; his love does not consume away. If the one who misunderstood him, the one who became cold to him, the one who hated him, returns, he finds him unchanged, unchanged in his same longing for the eternal, and with the same quiet calmness in the temporal. His love is eternal, he lays hold on the eternal, he rests in the eternal; therefore he expects each moment the same as he expects eternally, and therefore he is without disquietude, for in eternity there is time enough.

When an expectation of love is essentially able to make a man infirm, it must be because his expectation halts in a dependent-relationship to time, so that time has it in its power to determine whether the expectation is fulfilled or not. That is to say, the expectation is principally a temporal expectation; but such an expectation does not have the love which abides. That an expectation is essentially merely temporal, produces unrest in the expectation. Time does not really exist without unrest; it does not exist for dumb animals who are absolutely without anxiety; and the watch which tells the time cannot do it when the movement stops. But when the disquietude, as is the case in the merely temporal expectation, oscillates between fulfillment and non-fulfillment, so that the movement becomes swifter in time because of the passing of time, the fact that time elapses precipitates the disquietude, since the fulfillment, if it does not take place in time, cannot take place at allwhen this is the case, the expectation is consumed. At last the unrest apparently disappears, alas, just as when sickness has developed into consumption. But the lover who abides, has an eternal expectation, and this eternal expectation gives a sense of proportion in the unrest, which certainly in time swings between fulfillment and non-fulfillment, but independently of time, for the fulfillment is by no means made impossible because time is past: this lover is not consumed.

What faithfulness in the love which abides! It is far from our intention to wish to disparage the loving maiden, as if it were a kind of disloyalty in her (alas, a disloyalty—to a faithless lover!) that she weakened through the years and faded away, so that her earthly love became changed in the change which is the change of love itself through the years. And yet, yet—aye, it is a strange intercrossing of the selfcontradictory thought, but it cannot now be otherwise with even the highest form of faithfulness in earthly love, than that it almost seems to be disloyalty, because the earthly love is not the eternal. The contradiction does not lie in the girl, she remained faithful; the contradiction, which the girl herself suffered, lies in the fact that the earthly love is not the eternal, and consequently in the fact that it is impossible with eternal loyalty to lay hold on that which is not in itself the eternal. What faithfulness of love, on the other hand, to abide completely unchanged, without the slightest weakening, the same at every moment—whenever, at whatever time or hour, the misunderstanding, the enemy, the hater wishes to return to this lover! That he who abides never becomes infirm, is indeed to him an eternal gain; but it is in addition, and thus we here regard it, and thus he himself regards it, a work of love in faithfulness to those he loves.

And what would be so disconsolate, something indeed almost to despair over, as if, when the moment came when the mistaken one turned back and sought understanding, when the enemy turned back and sought friendship, when the one who had hated turned back and sought reconciliation—what would be so disconsolate as for the lover then to become worn out, so that neither understanding, nor the re-establishment of friendship, nor the renewed reconciliation in love would be able to bring about this blessed joy of eternity! And, on the other hand, what can make the moment of forgiveness, the transition to reconciliation so natural, so easy, as the fact that the lover (as was shown in the preceding) by constantly abiding has put the past away from him; for then on his part reconciliation is ready, just as if there had been no separation. When two people both have an idea about the past, or about the separation having been long, then the forgiveness is often a difficult collision, the relationship perhaps never becomes completely reestablished. But the lover knows nothing about the past, therefore he does even this last thing in love, he reduces the shock, so that no collision can take place: the transition to forgiveness cannot be made easier. How often have not two been almost on the verge of a reconciliation, but one became hurt, as they say? If this is the case it must be because something unkind from the past has been brought out; for it is indeed impossible for one to hurt one’s self on what is softer than the softest, on love. Truly, no boat which glides softly through the smooth water to where the rushes halt its progress and close about it, can be more certain of not being overturned than the one who returns and seeks reconciliation with the love that abides!

Such is the lover. That the most beautiful of everything, that the moment of reconciliation, should become a fruitless effort, a vain attempt, because by that time he had changed: he prevents that; for he abides, and never becomes worn out. And that the transition of forgiveness may be as easy as the meeting with one whom one has not seen for a long time; that the conversation of love may immediately be as natural as it is with one with whom one carries on a conversation; that the rambling pace may be as swift in measure as it is between two who for the first time begin a new life—in short, that there may be nothing, simply no halting, which might repel, not a second, not a split second: the lover effects this, for he abides and never becomes infirm.

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