agony nor prayer. That is your practice. That is the practice which God appoints you, and it is having its work in making you patient and humble and generous and unselfish and kind and courteous. Do not grudge the hand that is molding the still too shapeless image within you. It is growing more beautiful though you see it not, and every touch of temptation may add to its perfection. Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men and among things and among troubles and difficulties and obstacles. You remember Goethe’s words: “ Talent develops itself in solitude; character in the stream of life.” Talent develops itself in solitude — the talent of prayer, of faith, of meditation, of seeing the unseen; character grows in the stream of the world’s life. That chiefly is where men are to learn love. How? Now, how? To make it easier I have named a few of the elements of love. But these are only elements. Love itself can never be defined. Light is a something more than the sum of its ingredients — a glowing, dazzling, tremulous ether. And love is something more than all its elements — a palpitating, quivering, sensitive, living thing. By synthesis of all the colors men can make whiteness; they cannot make light. By synthesis of all the virtues men can make virtue; they cannot make love. How then are we to have this transcendent living whole conveyed into our souls? We brace our wills to secure it. We try to copy those who have it. We lay down rules about it. We watch. We pray. But these things alone will not bring love into our nature. Love is an effect. And only as we fulfill the right condition can we have the effect produced. Shall I tell you what the cause is? If you turn to the Revised Version of the First Epistle of John you find these words: “We love because he first loved us.” “We love,” not “We love him.” That is the way the old version has it and it is quite wrong. “ W e love — because he first loved us.” Look at that word “because.” It is the cause of which I have spoken. “ Because he first loved us,” the effect follows that we love, we love Him, we love all men. We cannot help it. Because He loved us, we love, we love everybody. Our heart is slowly changed. Contemplate the love of Christ and you will love. Stand before that mirror, reflect Christ’s character and you will be changed into the same image from tenderness to tenderness. There is no other way. You cannot love to order. You can only look at the lovely object and fall in love with it and grow into likeness to it. And so look at this perfect character, this perfect life. Look at the great sacrifice as He laid down Himself, all through life and upon the cross of Calvary and you must love Him. And loving Him, you most become like Him. Love begets love. It is a process of induction. Put a piece of iron in the presence of an electrified body and that piece of iron for a time becomes electrified. It is changed into a temporary magnet in the mere presence of a permanent magnet and as long as you leave the two side by side, they are both magnets alike. Remain side by side with Him who loved us and gave Himself for us and you too will become a permanent magnet, a permanently 28
attractive force; and like Him you will draw all men unto you, like Him you will be drawn unto all men. That is the inevitable effect of love. Any man who fulfills that cause must have that effect produced in him. Try to give up the idea that religion comes to us by chance or by mystery or by caprice. It comes to us by natural law or by supernatural law for all law is divine. Edward Irving went to see a dying boy once and when he entered the room he just put his hand on the sufferer’s head and said, “My boy, God loves you,” and went away. The boy started from his bed and called out to the people in the house, “God loves me! God loves me!” One word! It changed that boy. The sense that God loved him overpowered him, melted him down and began the creating of a new heart in him. And that is how the love of God melts down the unlovely heart in man and begets in him the new creature who is patient and humble and gentle and unselfish. And there is no other way to get it. There is no mystery about it. We love others, we love everybody, we love our enemies, because He first loved us. The Defense Now I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul's reason for singling out love as the supreme possession. It is a very remarkable reason. In a single word it is this: it lasts. “ Love,” urges Paul, “ never faileth.” Then he begins again one of his marvelous lists of the great things of the day and exposes them one by one. He runs over the things that men thought were going to last and shows that they are all fleeting, temporary, passing away. “Whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away.” It was the mother’s ambition for her boy in those days that he should become a prophet. For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any prophet and at that time the prophet was greater than the king. Men waited wistfully for another messenger to come, and hung upon his lips when he appeared, as upon the very voice of God. Paul says, “Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail.” The Bible is full of prophecies. One by one they have “ failed” ; that is, having been fulfilled, their work is finished; they have nothing more to do now in the world except to feed a devout man’s faith. Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that was greatly coveted. “Whether there be tongues, they shall cease.” As we all know, m a n y many centuries have passed since tongues have been known in this world. They have ceased. Take it in any sense you like. Take it, for illustration merely, as languages in general — a sense which was not in Paul’s mind at all, and which though it cannot give us the specific lesson, will point the general truth. Consider the words in which these chapters were written — Greek. It has gone. Take the Latin, the other great tongue of those days. It ceased long ago. Look at the Indian language. It is ceasing. The lan- THE KING'S BUSINESS
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