i. Our love to God.
1. " To them that love God " — but there are many who say, " We do not, we cannot love God. We love wife, child, mother, friend, more, far more, than we love the Infinite Abstraction called God, whom no man hath seen at any time." Now, such people are making a difficulty which does not exist. God has not called upon us to love an Infinite Abstraction. Let them be thankful that they do know human love. Such love is no bad foundation ; for this love, when real, is nature at her highest, and nature is also Divine, and is the pioneer to the higher. First that which is natural, afterwards that which is spiritual, is the Divine order. But the Invisible Parent Spirit has anticipated our objection. He has presented Himself to us under a form which, when recognized,
^ Bishop Wilmington Ingram.
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96 LOVE'S PROSPERITY
must take our hearts captive, and which appeases the soul's yearning desire for personality in the Being who is universal.
^ In Jesus, the whole moral life of the Absolute is manifested in integrity and completeness. Can we not love Him ? Can we not go even as far as Eenan, whom no man would accuse of superstition, credulity, or theological narrowness ? And Kenan, in his Vie de J^sus, apostrophizes the Incarnate One in these words : " Thou Jesus shalt become the corner-stone of humanity, inasmuch as to tear Thy name from the world would be to shake it to its very foundations ; no more shall men distinguish between Thee and God." 1
Begin from first when He encradled was In simple cratch, wrapt in a wad of hay, Between the toilful ox and humble ass, And in what rags, and in how base array, The glory of our heavenly riches lay. When Him the silly shepherds came to see, Whom greatest princes sought on lowest knee.
From thence read on the story of His life,
His humble carriage. His unfaulty ways.
His cancred foes, His flights, His toil. His strife.
His pains, His poverty. His sharp assayes,
Through which He passed His miserable days.
Offending none, and doing good to all.
Yet being maliced both of great and small.
Then thou shalt feel thy spirit so possessed And ravished with devouring great desire Of His dear self, that shall thy feeble breast Inflame with love, and set them all on fire With burning zeal, through every part entire, That in no earthly thing shalt thou delight. But in His sweet and amiable sight.^
^ 2. If at any time we should be shaken in our conviction of the blessed end of God's dealing, by the fear that we do not satisfy the condition of loving Him, then let us remember that this love is not so much a feeling as a posture or habit of the soul. It is clinging to Him. And if He should seem too distant to be grasped, too remote for us to touch even the hem of His garment, 80 that we cry, " Oh that I knew where I might find him, that ^ B. Wilberforce. '^ Spenser.
ROMANS VIII. 28 97
I might come even to his seat ! " then let us still further remember that the essence of love is obedience: "This is love, that we should walk after his commandments." And if we seek to follow His guidance, and submit ourselves to His hand, if we are willing to be made what we wish to become, and to be fashioned after the image of Christ, He will make good His word to us, and perfect that which concerneth us.
^ Perhaps there is no better daily prayer for the Christian than the collect of St. Gelasius : " 0 God, who hast prepared for them that love Thee such good things as pass man's understand- ing: Pour into our hearts such love toward Thee, that we, loving Thee above all things, may obtain Thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire ; through Jesus Christ our Lord."
3. It is the Divine love that draws the human. " Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us." " We love, because he first loved us." Our immediate consciousness is just this ; we love. Not, we have read the book of life ; we have had a glimpse of the eternal purpose in itself ; we have heard our names recited in a roll of the chosen ; but, we love. We have found in Him the eternal Love. In Him we have peace, purity, and that deep, final satisfaction, that view of " the king in his beauty," which is the summum honum of the creature. It was our fault that we saw it no sooner, that we loved Him no sooner. It is the duty of every soul that He has made to reflect upon its need of Him, and upon the fact that it owes it to Him to love Him in His holy beauty of eternal love. If we could not it was because we would not. If we cannot it is because, somehow or other, we will not — will not put ourselves without reserve in the way of the vision. " Oh taste and see that the Lord is good."