The obligation of love to our neighbour can never be so ful- filled that one comes to an end of it, but every fulfilment brings in its train the obligation of a new and yet higher fulfilment of the duty. It is with charity as with a flame. The more the flame burns and blazes, the more need there is of oil to feed it, and the more plentifully the oil is poured upon the flame, so much the more actively it blazes, so much the more it demands fresh nourishment. So they emulate each other, the flame and the oil, to the highest point of light and heat. Even so it is with love of our neighbour. Love begets answering love, and this answering love again demands fresh love, so that for neither is there limit or end. That is the meaning of the apostolic saying : *' Owe no man anything, save to love one another."
^ Emerson, E9$ay$, i. 85.
ROMANS XIII. 8 359
^ No man becomes independent of his fellow-men excepting Id serving his fellow-men.^
Dig channels for the streams of Love,
Where they may broadly run ; And Love has overflowing streams
To fill them every one.
But if at any time thou cease
Such channels to provide, The very founts of Love for thee
Will soon be parched and dried.
For we must share, if we would keep,
That good thing from above ; Ceasing to give, we cease to have —
Such is the law of Love.^
' Phillips Brooks, Addresses, 21. ' E. C. Trench.
Love and the Law.
Literature.
Adams (J. C), The Leisure of God, 51.
Body (G.), The Life of Love, 10.
Bonar (H.), God^s Way of Holiness, 104.
Campbell (R. J.), City Temple Sermons, 108, 122.
Dawson (W. J.), The Church of To-morrow, 229.
Fuller (M,), The Lord's Day, 355.
Gibbons (J. C.), Discourses and Sermons, 89.
Hall (C. R.), Advent to Whitsun-Day, 1.
Hall (W. A. N.), "Do Out the Duty," 50.
Hancock (T.), The Pulpit and the Press, 67.
Hare (A. W.), Alton Sermons, 538.
Hathaway (E. P.), The Ten Commandments and Lord's Prayer, 79, 81.
Home (W.), Religious Life and Thought, 111.
Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, ii. 121.
Lee (R,), Sermons, 215, 228.
M'Cosh (J.), Gospel Sermons, 199.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Romans, 304.
Mellor (E.), In the Footsteps of Heroes, 1.
Monierie (A. W.), The Origin of Evil and Other Sermons, 160.
Percival (J.), Some Helps for School Life, 165.
Sauter (B.), The Sunday Epistles, 79.
Streatfeild (G. S.), in Sermons for the People, New Ser., i. 23.
Christian World Pulpit, xiii. 131 (Beecher) ; xxv. 129 (Furse) ; xl. 152
(Dawson) ; Ixix. 203 (Hutton) ; Ixx. 372 (Muir). Church Pulpit Year Book, v. (1908), 162. Churchman's Pulpit, i. (Pt. 47), 284 (Atkin).
36«
Love and the Law.
Love is the fulfilment of the law. — Rom. xiii. lo.
1. "Of Law," says Hooker, in the celebrated sentence with which he closes the first book of his Ecclesiastical Polity, — " Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world ; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeliag her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both Angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and
joy."
^ I cannot fancy to my self what the Law of Nature means, but the Law of God. How should I know I ought not to steal, I ought not to commit Adultery, unless some body had told me 80 ? Surely 'tis because I have been told so ? 'Tis not because I think I ought not to do them, nor because you think I ought not; if so, our minds might change, whence then comes the restraint ? from a higher Power, nothing else can bind. I cannot bind myself, for I may untye myself again ; nor an equal cannot bind me, for we may untye one another. It must be a superior Power, even God Almighty. If two of us make a Bargain, why should either of us stand to it ? What need you care what you say, or what need I care what I say ? Certainly because there is something about me that tells me Fides est servanda, and if we after alter our minds, and make a new Bargain, there's Fides servanda there too.^
2. There is a law which men recognize always, even when they refuse to obey it. There is a still, small voice that speaks within, which tells a man that the right is to be followed and the wrong is to be shunned, which condemns a man when he has succumbed to the wrong, and refused the right. To all mankind,
' John Stilden, Table Talk, G6. 363
364 LOVE AND THE LAW
said a pagan writer, the voice of conscience is the voice of God. Things may fill us with amazement in this world of perplexities and antitheses, but none of us will refuse to recognize thai morality needs no defence. For man, however imperfect hia moral ideal may be, will recognize that if he does not obey the voice of conscience, at any rate he ought to do so ; and there is a power v/ithin, higher than himself, nobler than himself, which speaks to him without the voice of any preacher, " This ought ye to have done."