For the heart only dwells, truly dwells, with its treasure, And the languor of love captive hearts can unfetter;
And they who love God cannot love Him by measure, For their love is but hunger to love Him still better.
For the lack of desire is the ill of all ills,
Many thousands through it the dark pathway have trod ; The balsam, the wine of predestinate wills,
Is a jubilant pining and longing for God.
Oh, then, wish more for God, burn more with desire, Covet more the dear sight of His marvellous face !
(1) To love God is to love His character. — God is Love : and to love men till private attachments have expanded into a philan- thropy which embraces all, at last even the evil and enemies, with compassion — that is to love God. God is Purity : and to be pure in thought and look ; to turn away from unhallowed books and conversation, to abhor the moments in which we have not been pure, is to love God. God is Truth: to be true, to hate every form of falsehood, to live a brave, true, real life — that is to love God. God is Infinite : and to love the boundless, reaching on from grace to grace, adding charity to faith, and rising upwards ever to see the Ideal still above us, and to die with it unattained, aiming insatiably to be perfect even as the Father is perfect — that is love to God.
(2) Love is manifested in obedience. — Love is the life of which obedience is the form. * He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." Nothing can be love to God which does not shape itself into obedience. We remember the anecdote of the Eoman commander who forbade an engage-
64 THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE
ment with the enemy. The first transgressor against his pro- hibition was his own son, who accepted the challenge of the leader of the other host, met, slew, spoiled him, and then in triumphant feeling carried the spoils to his father's tent. But the Roman father refused to recognize the instinct which prompted this as deserving of the name of love. Disobedience contradicted it, and deserved death. So with God: strong feelings, warm expressions, varied internal experience co-existing with disobedi- ence, God counts not as Love. Mere weak feeling may not usurp that sacred name.
Tf About this time I had constantly in my mind that wonder- ful reconciliation of half the theological enigmas which ever have arisen, which Maurice points out in one of his sermons on the Temptation, and expounds more fully (tho', I think, not so forcibly) in one of his latter Prayer-book series on the Consecra- tion Prayer. He reminds us how " worldly men in their carnal and proud hearts cannot conceive how the Father commands because the Son obeys, and the Son obeys because the Father commands." This had for some time given to me a most blessed and practical solution of the question of Free Will. I dared not apply the term " servile " to this loving and willing yet eternal obedience of the Son " begotten before all worlds " ; yet surely it was the fullest, completest obedience, the perfect type of all imperfect obedience on earth, and likewise was the authority of the Father the fullest, completest authority, the perfect type of all imperfect authority on earth. This fundamental doctrine of the filial subordination of the Son from all eternity (in no wise interfering with His co-eternity and co-equality with the Father) is hard to receive, and will always be rejected when the under- standing seeks to exert an universal empire ; yet I fully believe that it is the keystone of theology and humanity.1
If While abhorring war, M. Coillard always had the strongest sympathy with the military profession. His mind seemed to move in its imagery. Christianity, as he conceived it, was the march of an ever- victorious army ; to him it meant a loyalty, not a philosophy, still less a ceremonial system. He had no other ambition than to be " a good soldier of Jesus Christ." " A French general," he once wrote, " told his aide-de-camp that the polite- ness of a soldier was obedience ; and I myself hold that in all circumstances our duty to our Master is fidelity." 2
1 The Life ovnd Letters of Fcnton J. A. Hart, i. 135.
2 C. W. Mackintosh, Coillard of the Zambesi, 106,
i CORINTHIANS n. 9 65
Lord of the host of deep desires
That spare no sting, yet are to me Sole echo of the silver choirs
Whose dwelling is eternity —
With all save thee my soul is pressed
In high dispute from day to day, But, Love, at thy most high behest
I make no answer, and obey.1
1 John Drinkwater, Poems of Men and Hours, 21,
I COR.
God's Fellow-workers.
Literature.
Darlow (J. H.), The Upivard Calling, 178.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, iii. 405.
Herford (B.), Anchors of the Soul, 77.
Hodgkin (T.), Human Progress and the Inward Light, 42.
Jackson (G.), Memoranda Paulina, 225, 230.
James (J. A.), Sermons, iii. 158.
Jones (W. B.), The Peace of God, 243.
Keenleyside (C. B.), God's Fellow-workers, 79.
Lightfoot (J. B.), Ordination Addresses, 214.