The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one, Yet the light of a whole world dies
With the setting sun.
ST. JOHN XXI. 15-17 431
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one, But the light of a whole life dies
If love be done.^
4. Love is unselfish. — " Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me ? " I do not doubt your love. I did not doubt it even in the moment of your sad fall, but it was not that supreme affection to which I was entitled. You loved Me, but you really loved yourself better, and put your own desires before My will. Events, however, have been teaching you, experience has been leading you to truer views of Me and of yourself ; tell Me now do you love Me ? Is your love prepared now to sacrifice everything for Me, and in the event of others coming into a competition with Me, are you willing to give Me the preference, to yield to Me the first place in your heart ? That is the only love Jesus can regard with complacence.
^ A German mystic in the fifteenth century, John of Goch, thus stated the relation between love and self. " What wings are to a bird, love is to us. They seem to add weight to the body : | in reality, however, they elevate it into the air. In like manner the yoke of love, when imposed upon our sensuous nature, not only does not weigh it down, but lifts the spirit with the senses to heavenly things. Take from them their wings, and you take from birds the power of flying. Even so, separate love from the will, and the will is made incapable of every act that transcends nature." Nevertheless how rarely we reckon those Christians to be in the front rank of the Church who are distinguished by nothing else except their immense power of affection. We still reserve the chief seats in our synagogues for the eloquent speakers, the munificent givers, the superior spiritual personages, who may fall far below others in simple, unwearying, self-forgetful tender- ness.2
II.
Service as the Fulfilment of Love.
The presence or absence in us of the love of Christ is not only an index to our present state, but a prophecy of all that is to be. The love of Christ was that which enabled and impelled the
^ F. Ballard, Does it Matter what a 3fan Believes? 76. 2 T. H. Darlow, The Upward Calling, 320.
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432 LOVE AND SERVICE
Apostles to live great and energetic lives. It was this simple affection which made a life of aggression and reformation possible to them. This gave them the right ideas and the sufficient impulse. And it is this affection which is open to us all and which equally now as at first impels to all good. Let the love of Christ possess any soul and that soul cannot avoid being a blessing to the world around. Christ scarcely needed to say to Peter, " Feed My sheep ; be helpful to those for whom I died," because in time Peter must have seen that this was his calling. Love gives us sympathy and intelligence. Our conscience is enlightened by sympathy with the persons we love ; through their desires, which we wish to gratify, we see higher aims than our own, aims which gradually become our own. And wherever the love of Christ exists, there sooner or later will the purposes of Christ be understood, His aims be accepted. His fervent desire and energetic endeavour for the highest spiritual condition of the race become energetic in us and carry us forward to all good.
1. Service is the natural outlet of love. — The right conduct of the life is a consequence and fruit of the Incarnation. Incarna- tion is a name for nothing at all unless it be the name not only of the historic event but also of a personal experience, the entry of the Divine into the human energies of the man who declares that he believes rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accordingly to say that a man has the love of Christ is to say, in humaner and more concrete speech, that the Incarnation has been actualized in particular life, that Christ is born in him, that the power of the life from heaven has been poured into this channel
"[{ For him who would take on him the office of a pastor, the question is suggested. Why do you undertake the office ? Is it from love of Christ, and from a sense of the obligation to show your gratitude for what He has done for you, in the way which He has commanded — namely, by services to His sheep ? If any are actuated by lower motives they have reason to fear that they lie under the woe which, through the mouth of Ezekiel, God denounced against the shepherds who feed themselves and not the flock ; who allow the flock to wander through the mountains, and on every high hill, and to be scattered on the face of the earth, while none scarcheth or lookcth after them.^
^ G. Salmon, Catliedral aiid University Sermons, 55.
ST. JOHN XXI. 15-17 433
2. Service is love's evidence. — In giving St. Peter the charge, "Feed my lamhs; feed my sheep," Christ was guarding him against a danger to which he was at this moment liable, the danger of sinking down into an indulgence of sentiment, of dwelling upon the words, " Thou knowest that I love thee," and forfeiting in this sweet humiliation his calling as an Apostle, and its prize. There is a subtle charm in self-humiliation, an ensnaring luxury of penitence. We feel it in a self-assertive world. From the blare of trumpets, from the strife for mastery, from the rest- lessness of ambition, and the constant temptation to self-seeking, how blessed to retire to self-abasement before the Lord; how sweetly then from lowly lips falls the confession, " Thou knowest that I love thee." To cherish this life alone is very dangerous. Hence comes the pride that apes humility; hence self-pleasing under the garb of lowliness. Worse than the hypocrisy which disfigures its countenance that it may appear unto men to fast is the subtle insincerity that disfigures itself that it may appear unto itself to fast. Christ sends St. Peter from confessing, as He sent Mary from adoring Him, to do His work. The world is the true sphere for lowliness ; loving labour among others is the school of self-humiliation; love of Christ is perfected in the activities of a human sympathy.