^ Maternal love is an instinct ; but there are instincts which breathe the divine.*
Pour out thy love like the rush of a river. Wasting its waters for ever and ever. Through the burnt sands that reward not the giver; Silent or songful thou nearest the sea.
^ Edward White.
^ Golden Thoughts of Carmen Sylva, Queen of Rovmania (tr. by H. S. Edwards), 18.
ST. MARK 311
Scatter thy life as the summer showers pouring. What if no bird through the pearl rain is soaring? What if no blossom looks upward adoring?
Look to the life that was lavished for thee.
4. How shall we know that we love God ?
(1) If we love God we shall have 'preference for God's society. We count very precious indeed the society of those we love. Their presence is our joy. We long for their company when absent. We hasten back to them at the first opportunity. We regret interruptions. So the man that loves God desires His society; communion with God is his highest joy. Nothing may compare with the preciousness of fellowship with his Eedeemer. He suffers nothing to interrupt his intercourse with God. Did not Sir Thomas Abney leave the Lord Mayor's banquet at the hour of evening worship — though he himself was Lord Mayor — that he might go and commune with God ?
(2) If we love God we show preference for His service. We are prepared to do anything for those we love. When away from home we scan their letters and read between the lines to divine their will, that we may please them. We plan before- hand, and display that forethought which is one of the best signs of love. We are willing to make considerable sacrifices for their sakes. We give our time, energy, money, thought, and talent ungrudgingly for them. And in all these sacrifices there is the element of joy. We are glad to do it, we want to do it, because we love them. Jacob served seven years for Eachel, and they seemed to him but a few days for the love he had to her.
^ If we would know whether or not we love God, we have to ask ourselves just this, whether our love of God builds up for us and through us and in us a life of moral conduct, a life of habit which, down to the smallest details, differs from other men who do not love God. Far from love being a vague, unreal, shadowy, remote thing, it is the very core and heart of conduct, and it is to build up a law, and we are to ask ourselves, " Do I speak more truth because I love God ? Am I more honest, more sincere, because I love God ? Am I more thankful, more unselfish, more kindly, more pleasant, more gay, more helpful, because I love God ? " If 1 love God it must make me so at each
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312 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
point, in each tiny detail of my life — ^in the workshop, in the street, at home.
5. And now let us consider how the love of God is to be cultivated.
(1) You never — either in nature or in grace — you never love an abstraction, you never love an abstract thing. God must be a personal God to you before you can love Him. He must be more than that. You must have a sense of property in Him. He must be your own God. It is when you can say " my " that you grow fond. Thomas said, " My Lord, and my God ! " Even as God always says to us, " Thou art Mine." For so we have it — pointedly and emphatically and purposely here : " The Lord our God is one Lord ; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might."
(2) Presence is essential to love, even in human love. If you have not a presence in fact, you always have it in fancy. And the more you love, the more you make a presence in fancy. You realise it. There is an imaginary presence of the person you love always with you. So it must be with the Divine love. You must be conscious of a Presence, if you would love God. God has always provided for this in the Old Testament — " My presence shall go with thee " ; which Moses so appreciated that he said he would not take a step without it. And in the New Testament the last promise of the Gospel is, " I am with you alway."
(3) But there is another process — deeper and more mystic — by which love is gendered, and love is fostered. God, that He might be known, and that, being known, He might be loved, took the form of the loveliest and sweetest and most attaching Being that ever walked the earth. And when that would not do. He came to us by a Spirit which, being a part of Himself, is a " Spirit of love," and that Spirit infuses Himself into our spirit. Through that Spirit we are actually united to that dear One, who was incarnate for us for that very end. So we have that one great secret of the highest order of love, union. There is union of Spirit with spirit. And there is union of the whole man with the humanity of Jesus. There is no love