John Writes About the Difference Between the Natural Love and the Divine Love

February 19, 1919
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, John.

Let me say just a word. I was with you today when you were talking to your friend, (Mr. Colburn) and heard your conversation and saw the utter want of comprehension on the part of your friend as to the truths of the spirit world and, especially, of the laws that divide the mere perfect man from the Divine man or spirit. He is so engulfed in the conceptions that he has of these loves arising from his experience in life that he can only see the existence of one love, the natural, and his mind is not capable of seeing the other Love and, of course, his soul has not that development which would assure him of the reality of the Divine Love.

The mind itself is capable of informing him of the existence and working of the natural love, and as this is the only means that he possesses of understanding what love is, he cannot possibly understand this Love, and that soul developed to a degree by the very Love itself. He may argue to the extent of the capacity of his mind and he will never be able to comprehend the Love that requires a perception of the soul, and he may remain satisfied and convince himself that the natural love is the only love and that when it becomes developed to a certain degree it becomes the Divine Love, and then find that he is far away from the truth.

He must know, and I mean it is necessary for him to know, that only those who have the Divine Love to some degree are capable of knowing that the Divine is a thing of itself, and not the development of the natural love and has in it not the qualities of that love. The one is of God; that is, partakes of His very nature, while the other is also of God, but does not partake of His nature, but is only a creation intended to make man happy and perfect in his condition of the mere man - the merely created existence.

I thought that I would give you these short comments on your conversation in order to show the grave and important mistake under which your friend is laboring. He will not easily believe these things of truth while in the flesh, and when he comes to spirit life, the difficulties will be just as great, and it may be that he will always be content to remain the possessor of this natural love only. I wish that it might be otherwise, and that he might let go his intellectual belief and harken to the call of the soul, which when not trammeled by these beliefs is continually longing for this Greater Love.

Believe that I am your friend and interested in you to an extent that you cannot now comprehend, but which some day you will understand and wonder that such a thing could have been. Good night.

Your brother in Christ,
John