^ " Few men in these days," he once said to me, " have done 80 much for the religious life of Scotland as James Morison. The pendulum of human thought is ever swinging to the extreme points : he found it at the extreme point of God's sovereignty, and brought it to the other extreme — man's responsibility; but the truth lies where these two meet " ; and, crossing his arms, he
154 THE CONSTRAINT OF LOVE
made the sacred sign, as, in a voice of singular depth and persuasiveness, he said — "All truth centres in the Cross of Christ." 1
3. The love of Christ manifested on the cross stirs love in us. The Eedeemer's love is a fire of live coals, which ever burns on the altar of His own compassionate heart. But the human heart is as an unkindled piece of coal, hard, cold and dark. It never can of itself either kindle itself or catch the fire of Divine love to do so. It can never, therefore, change its coldness and darkness into warmth and brightness ; nevertheless, if a live coal from the altar of celestial love touch and catch hold of it, it is speedily- transformed, its blackness into brightness, its coldness into radiating heat, and its hardness into yielding softness. It is similar, when the love of Christ catches and kindles with its heavenly flame the human heart. It transforms the soul into which it enters, so that its spiritual darkness is replaced by spiritual brightness, its hardness becomes softness and sensibility, its coldness a fountain of warmth, glowing and scintillating with true Christian feeling. In fact the heart and life is transformed by the entrance of the love of Christ, and becomes instinct with His love. A new energy or force has been created in it which is similar to, but feebler than, the love which kindled it.
^ It was about three weeks before his end, whilst confined to his room for a few days by an attack of feverish illness, to which, especially when in anxiety, he had always from time to time been liable, that he called Mrs. Arnold to his bed-side, and expressed to her how, within the last few days, he seemed to have " felt quite a rush of love in his heart towards God and Christ " ; and how he hoped that all this might make him more gentle and tender, and that he might not soon lose the impression thus made upon him ; adding that, as a help to keeping it alive, he intended to write something in the evenings before he retired to rest.^
Lord, hast Thou so loved us, and will not we
Love Thee with heart and mind and strength and soul, Desiring Thee beyond our glorious goal,
Beyond the heaven of heavens desiring Thee?
Each saint, all saints cry out: Yea me, yea me,
^ A. Guthrie, Robertson of Irvine, 63.
* A. P. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, ii. 321.
2 COR. V. 14. 15 155
Thou hast desired beyond an aureole, Beyond Thy many Crowns, beyond the whole Ninety and nine unwandering family. Souls in green pastures of the watered land, Faint pilgrim souls wayfaring thro' the sand, Abide with Thee and in Thee are at rest: Yet evermore, kind Lord, renew Thy quest After new wanderers; such as once Thy Hand Gathered, Thy Shoulders bore, Thy Heart caressed.^
4. The impulse that comes from the cross is sustained by the convictions of an enlightened judgment. " The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all." The love of Christ is a principle which operates, and can operate, only for reasons shown. It calls into exercise our judging faculty. So far from dealing exclusively with the feelings, it requires us to think. In this manner is its motive power main- tained, just as in the case of the engine by whose nice and measured play the huge vessel is propelled against wind and tide. To one who has never witnessed the results of steam-power, such a sight is quite a marvel. " How can it be ? " he asks. " How such power?" You tell him of the expansive power of steam. " But what is steam ? " he asks ; " and where is it generated ? " You take him on board, and descend with him into the vessel. You show him the huge boilers, and the great furnaces beneath, and the heaps of fuel with which the fires are fed. Only then his wonder ceases. And what constitutes the fuel of the fire which underlies, so to speak, the visible play of the Christian pro- pelling power ? The Holy Spirit, it must always be allowed, is the source of all spiritual processes. He is the Inspirer of Christian love. He fans the hidden flame, and keeps up the glow. At the same time. He employs means; and the means which the Spirit usually employs for maintaining the influence of the love of Christ up to the constraining point is this— jtidging concerning the grand comprehensive fact that "Christ died for us." The facts of Calvary constitute, as it were, the fuel which feeds the sacred fire, whereby is maintained the power of spiritual propulsion; and by the earnest, prayerful, and persistent exercise of all our faculties — our thinking, reasoning, * Christina G. Rossetti, Verses, 34,