Oh, there are moments in man's mortal years.
When for an instant that which long has lain
Beyond our reach, is on a sudden found
In things of smallest compass, and we hold
The unbounded shut in one small minute's space.
And worlds within the hollow of our hand, —
A world of music in one word of love,
A world of love in one quick wordless look,
A world of thought in one translucent phrase,
A world of memory in one mournful chord,
A world of sorrow in one little song.
Such moments are man's holiest, — the full-orbed
And finite form of Love's infinity.^
2. "Love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." St. Paul seems to limit the action of love here to doing no ill. That is simply because the command- ments are mostly negative ; and that they are is a sad token of the lovelessness natural to us all. But do we love ourselves only
* Heury Bernard Carpenter, Liber Amoris.
374 LOVE AND THE LAW
negatively, or are we satisfied with doing ourselves no harm ? That stringent pattern of love to others prescribes not only degree, but manner. It teaches that true love to men is not weak indulgence, but must sometimes chastise, and thwart, and always must seek their good, and not merely their gratification. Who- ever will honestly seek to apply that negative precept of working no ill to others, will find it positive enough. We harm men when we fail to help them. If we can do them a kindness, and do it not, we do them ill. Non -activity for good is activity for evil.
ff Some years ago we were reading day by day of a murder that had been committed in the swamps of Niagara, and such was the solidarity of the human race that that isolated deed was discussed right round the globe. We saw it all enacted, like some stage drama, before our very eyes. We saw this man, an Oxford graduate, a man of good family, a man reared in honourable traditions, leading his victim on and on to some lonely spot in that dismal swamp, and then the pistol shot rings, and without remorse he turns away, leaving his victim — who has eaten with him, jested with him, trusted in him — to die miserably and un- pitied. We tried this man for murder, but that red blossom of murder was only the outward sign of something else. Go deeper to the root, and you will see that he wants to steal, and he covets, and he lies before he wants to murder. These were the active causes of the crime; this was the black sap that fed the tree upon which this hideous blossom of murder at last sprang into life. Keduce all these things to a sentence, and you have said everything when you have said, "This man did not love." If he had loved his friend he would not have lied to him ; if he had loved him he would not have coveted his money ; still less could he have pushed him out of life for the sake of paltry gain, which — such is the irony of crime — he never even handled. Eor that unhappy youth love would literally have been the " fulfilling of the law." ^
3. Love fulfils the commandments. We may take the com- mandments one by one, and apply this test to them, and we shall see at once that they would not have been needed if only men had loved one another. Do we need to be told not to murder any one we love, not to defraud him, not to covet his possessions, not to dishonour his home ? Why, we not only cannot do it, we simply cannot conceive the thought of doing it. If we have love, we cannot help keeping the law. If we have love, we cannot help
' W. J. Dawson.
ROMANS XIII. lo 375
being moral. It may seem but a scanty equipment to produce perfection, and so the seven notes of music may seem to be a scanty equipment to produce the heaven-born melodies of a Handel or a Beethoven. But see how they use them, — of what infinite and glorious combinations are they capable ! How the highest and deepest emotions of our nature find liberation and a language as we thrill to the majestic strains which purify and exalt us, which give us visions of truth, of self, of heaven, of God, and of the joy of God, which no speech could utter and no articu- late array of words could express. Yet there are but seven notes of music in it all, something a child might learn in an hour, but which a Handel or a Beethoven cannot exhaust in a lifetime. So it is with this supreme quality of love ! It is capable of all but infinite combinations and interpretations; it utters the grand music of heroism and the soft lute-music of courtesy ; it is patriotism, it is altruism, it is martyrdom; it stoops to the smallest things of life and it governs the greatest; it controls the temper and it regulates the reason; it extirpates the worst qualities and it develops and refines the best ; it reforms " and transforms the whole man into the image of God, for there is no height of character to which love cannot lift a man, and there is no height of character possible without it. Love is character. " Love is the fulfilling of the law."