Welcome to our Sunday Talks, an exclusive series for the patrons of the inspirational living podcast.

Today's talk was edited and adapted from Love's Way by Orson Sweat Martin, published in 1918.

In an address over the grave of a little child, Robert G. Ingersoll said,

I had rather live in love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.

Another life is of little worth unless we know and love the ones who love us here.

The most beautiful thing on this earth, that which every human being craves most, is love.

Mere suggestion of life without it is unthinkable, for is love where love is not there is no

life there is only its semblance the saddest situation in life one where most of us

would be tempted to play the coward is the feeling that nobody cares what becomes of us,

whether we win or lose in the great game of life.

As long as there is someone who cares, the motive is not all gone.

No matter how desperate or hopeless our outlook, the feeling that somebody cares,

that someone would miss us, that there is somebody who believes in a wife, a mother, a child,

a friend, even an animal, enables us to struggle on.

But to feel that we are absolutely alone, friendless, that nobody cares whether we go up

or down in the world, win or lose, whether we live or die, is tragic. Under such conditions, it requires stern stuff to try still to do one's best.

If it be that there is any human being so forlorn, they must have shut love out of their heart.

They must have given up trying to love or to be loved. They must have

stifled the love instinct implanted by the creator in every living creature. Something has

twisted their nature, for God made us for love, to love and be loved.

Some time ago I had a letter from a man who said he had soured on love, that he never wanted

to hear the word again, or to see it in print. In his reading he avoided the subject of love.

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