^ Love is so comprehensive a grace that it includeth all the rest ; and so is in effect the fulfilling of the whole law. There is a thread of love which runneth through all the particular duties and offices of Christian life, and stringeth them like so many rich pearls into one single chain.^
4. Love is the fulfilling of the law for three reasons : — (1) It removes the lias of self-love that is in our nature. — That there is such a bias in our nature is plain. Else why should we all be such unfair judges in our own case, and, comparatively speaking, such fair judges in matters we are not concerned with ? Any man of common sense can see the rights of a case, where the question is between neighbour and neighbour. Not one in ten, or in fifty, or in a hundred, can see the right of the case, when the question is between his neighbour and himself. Where self is concerned, the weight of self-love is sure to slip into one of the
^ Bishop Sanderson.
n6 LOVE AND THE LAW
scales ; and so they become uneven. Nor is this to be remedied, except by putting into the opposite scale that love to our neigh- bour which Christ commands us to cherish.
Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul ;
Love is the only angel who can bid the gates unroll ;
And when he comes to call thee, arise and follow fast;
His way may lie through darkness, but it leads to light at last.^
(2) It gives us sympathy, and is the only effective principle of duty. — This love is far more amenable to reason than the passion which goes by the same name. "We may set ourselves," as George Eliot has put it, — we may studiously set ourselves " to learn something of the poetry and pathos lying in the experience of all human souls — poetry and pathos that look out through dull grey eyes, and that speak in a voice of quite ordinary tones." We may know something of this if we will only think. And such knowledge will inevitably give birth to sympathy.
^ If ever you see in your neighbour the downcast, suffering, timid look, that unmistakable air which marks so often the first apprenticeship to hardness, the beginning of the death of finer feelings, does it strike you to show kindness, to administer comfort or ensure protection ? Does it not sometimes rather happen that you help to break the bruised reed, that you show contempt or indifference when you should show loving-kindness, or that you even join in mocking or cruelty when you ought to have put your heel upon it? "Do as you would be done by" is only a low form of practical maxim, but even this is very often higher than our practice. Does it never happen that you get your pleasure out of annoyance to another ? Does it never happen that you allow this to be done by some one near you ? Does a stranger coming amongst us young, inexperienced, or it may be with some peculiarity, never find his life made miserable by some cruel, or hard, or low-toned neighbour ? ^
Do thy day's work, my dear,
Though fast and dark the clouds are drifting near,
Though time has little left for hope and very much for fear.
Do thy day's work, though now
The hand must falter and the head must bow,
And far above the failing foot shows the bold mountain brow
^ Henry van Dyke.
^ Bishop Peicival, Some Relpsfor School Life, 175.
ROMANS XIII. lo 377
Yet there is left for us,
Who on the valley's verge stand trembling thus,
A light that lies far in the west — soft, faint, but luminous.
We can give kindly speech
And ready, helping hand to all and each,
And patience to the young around by smiling silence teach.
We can give gentle thought, And charity, by life's long lesson taught,
And wisdom, from old faults lived down, by boil and failure wrought.
We can give love, unmarred By selfish snatch of happiness, unjarred
By the keen aims of power or joy that make youth cold and hard.
/ And, if gay hearts reject
The gifts we hold, would fain fare on unchecked On the bright roads that scarcely yield all that young eyes expect,
Why, do thy day's work stilL The calm, deep founts of love are slow to chill ; And heaven may yet the harvest yield, the work-worn hands to fiU.
(3) It springs from love to God. — There is no true love of man unconnected with the love of God, nor any which does not origin- ate there. The feeling which takes the name of benevolence is too fickle in its nature, too narrow in its range, too easily checked and extinguished, to fulfil, in any due degree, the duties with which God charges us towards each other. To do this we must love each other for His sake after His pattern, and by extending to them the love we bear to Himself. Then it becomes Christian charity, and is equal to every precept. "Love worketh no ill" to our neighbour ; it " thinketh " none. It " sufi"ereth long and is kind." In no case " doth it behave itself unseemly." It furnishes unto all good works. It is a principle broad enough for the whole range of our duty; and to be improving in every grace of the Gospel, we need only to be growing perfect in love.