When I have heard Thy voice and felt Thy power,
Then evil lost its grasp, and passion hushed. Owned the divine enchantment of the hour.
These were but seasons, beautiful and rare;
Abide in me, and they shall ever be; Fulfil at once Thy precept and my prayer —
Come, and abide in me, and I in Thee ! * 1 H. B. Stowe.
The Love of Christ.
ErH.-COL. — II
Literature.
Aglionby (F. K.), The Better Choice, 118. Arnot (W.), The Lesser Parables, 200. Benson (E. W.), Livinxj Theology, 1. Church (R. W.), Village Sermons, ii. 287. Davies (J. A.), Seven Words of Love, 134. Grubb (E.), The Personality of God, 122. Grubb (G. C), The Light of His Countenance, 19. Jerdan {C.){ For the Lord's Table, 21. Lusbington (F. de W.), Sermons to Yoring Boys, 63. McFadyen (J. E.), The Divine Pursuit, 121. Maclaren (A.), Christ in the Heart, 27, 41. Manning (H. E.), Sermons, iii. 217. Mason (A. J.), Length, 1. Moody (D. L.), The Way to God, 1. Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, v. 1, 9. Purchase (E. J.), The Pathway of the Tempted, 118. Ridding (G.), The Revel and the Battle, 93. Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), v. No. 577. Whitworth (W. A.), Christian Thought on Present-Day Questions, 1. Wilberforce (B.), Following on to Know the Lord, 131. "Wray (J. J.), Honey in the Comb, 278. "Wright (D.), The Power of an Endless Life, 170. British Congregationalist, Jan. 28, 1899 (Jowett). Cambridge Review, viii. No. 203 (Barry). Christian World Pulpit, Ixv. 77 (Robinson).
Churchman's Pulpit : Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, xii. 226 (Hunting- ton), 229 (Lloyd), 231 (Dix), 237 (Williams), 238 (Silvester). Literary Churchman, xiv. 394.
The Love of Christ.
I bow my knees unto the Father ... to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.— Eph. iii. 17-19.
1. These words, and the remarkable passage to which they belong, supply us with the keynote of the Apostle Paul's life and letters and ministry. They show us how intensely he was permeated with and dominated by the love of Christ. It was not an idea that possessed him ; neither was it a system. It was a Person, and that Person was Christ. It was not the life of Christ or the character of Christ that fascinated him ; it was Christ Himself. Jesus Christ was the charm of his whole life : " To me to live is Christ." St. Paul's life was interpenetrated with Christ, so much so that he lost himself in Him: "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."
^ I hardly know anything more disheartening than to read
such a passage as this, and to feel while we read it how little our
own hearts and thoughts answer to it. We see how St. Paul
felt and thought. The words come glowing from his soul ; he is
lifted up above himself with the greatness, the inconceivable
greatness, of the things he is talking of. His inward eye is fixed
on the love of Christ to the world — on the wonderfulness of God's
counsels to men — on the height and depth, and length and breadth,
which no one can measure, of what had just been made known of
God's feelings about them, and of His purposes towards them.
And from the fullness of his heart his mouth speaks. We see that
he is overflowing with the feelings produced by the contemplation
of what Christ is and has done. His whole mind is alive to it.
He speaks not by custom, or because it is right to magnify the
Lord's greatness, but because he cannot help it — he cannot restrain
what he feels and thinks.
Ar.d how differently do we read the words ! There they are
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i64 THE LOVE OF CHRIST
before us — words of fire and life, words which show that to him who spoke them the love of Christ was the most real, the uearest, the most absorbing thought in the world. Christ is not less to us than he was to St. Paul. But how often must we confess to our- selves that we have no feelings which answer to the Apostle's manner of speaking ; we cannot repeat them as the natural and unforced expression of our own feelings. There seems such a gulf between what we ought to feel and what we do feel, such a dijfference between the way in which the Gospel appeared to St. Paul and the way in which it appears to us. He found no difficulty in speaking worthily of his Master's love; he passed from the outer scenes of ordinary life to the contemplation of Christ, and straightway his heart began to kindle and his tongue to speak. But we seem only able to touch, as it were, the outside shell of his words. We see, but do not feel, how excellent they are. They are such a contrast to the common thoughts of our life, they are so far above us, that we cannot enter into them.^
2. This constitutes the third of the petitions in this great prayer of St. Paul's, each of which rises above, and is a con- sequence of, the preceding, and leads on to, and is a cause or occa- sion of, the subsequent one.