^ J. Reid Ho watt, The Children's Angel, 16.
* Henry Jones, Browning as a Philosophical and Eeligious Teacher, ch. vi.
I JOHN IV. 19 373
infusion of air, heated it to a very high temperature, put it into a flask, sealed it hermetically, put it aside. A few weeks after the flask was opened ; there was life inside it. Now, you see, they claimed this as spontaneous generation. The other side said, " It is not conclusive. You did not apply enough heat." They heated it several degrees higher till there could not possibly have been any existing germs of life within the flask. They opened it after a lapse of time; there was no life. And now they accept this truth, life alone can propagate life. Life cannot spring into exist- ence, it must be communicated. It is exactly the same thino- with regard to love. You cannot make the black coals on your hearth burst into flame until you apply a light. If you want to love, you must wait till love comes from without. There is just one source of love, and that is God. And there can be no love in the human heart till the love of God comes in and creates it there. It must come by a genesis, not by spontaneous generation. We love because God has first loved us.^
He seeks for ours as we do seek for His ; Nay, 0 my soul, ours is far more His bliss Than His is ours; at least it so doth seem. Both in His own and our esteem.
His earnest love. His infinite desires, His living, endless, and devouring fires, Do rage in thirst, and fervently require A love 'tis strange it should desire.
We cold and careless are, and scarcely think Upon the glorious spring whereat we drink. Did He not love us we could be content: We wretches are indifferent!
'Tis death, my soul, to be indifferent; Set forth thyself unto thy whole extent, And all the glory of His passion prize. Who for thee lives, who for thee dies.^
(1) But in order that the love of God may beget love in us there must be sufficient evidence of His love. What evidence have we ? We have evidence enough of God's love — at least for the ordinary experience of life — in the beauty of the world, the beneficence of nature, and all the joy of human intercourse.
^ Mazzini crossed the St. Gotthard with some danger. " The
^ J. Watson, in T?ie Contemporary Fulpit, ii. 296. ' Thomas Traherne.
374 THE RAY AND THE REFLECTION
scene," he wrote back to England, " was sublime, Godlike. No one knows what poetry is, who has not found himself there, at the highest point of the route, on the plateau, surrounded by the peaks of the Alps in the everlasting silence that speaks of Grod. There is no atheism possible on the Alps." ^
^ One who went with Dr. McLaren to the Isle of Wight writes : " I saw during our walks on one or two lovely mornings that wonderful light in his eyes, his lips slightly parted, his face almost transfigured, a look of ecstasy as he gazed lovingly (no other word will do) at the minute flowers covering the merest cranny in the moss-grown walls by the roadside. He said no word, but one could see that he was worshipping at the 'Temple's inner shrine.' " ^
^ Wilberforce did not do things by halves. What he did, he did with all his might. His likes and dislikes were strong. He felt strongly, and so he spoke and acted strongly. There were three things for which he evidently had an intense love : the Truth, Nature, Home. And if we were permitted to look for the underlying cause we should probably find it in a perfectly simple belief in the Fatherhood of G-od as revealed to us by our Lord. The truth was God's truth. The world was God's world. The home was God's home.^
(2) It is only when we come to the dark sad side of life that
our faith begins to fail. And here the Incarnation takes up the
thread of proof, not by removing the problem of the mystery of
sorrow from our minds, but by revealing God Himself as willing
to bear it with and for us, and so enabling our hearts to feel it the
crowning testimony of His love. The soul that has reached this
certitude needs no other motive to ensure its obeying the
commandment, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." But there
are many who have not attained it, from fearing to make the
initial venture of taking up their cross. With all their disbelief
in miracles, they still seek after a sign. A sign, they must
remember, cannot produce conviction; for conviction comes by
obedience, and by that alone. But a sign may arrest attention,
and lead to obedience in the end. And there is a sign which
outsoars all other miracles, and grows only more wonderful as the
ages pass along, and that is the empire of Jesus Christ over
human hearts. He claimed it, and history has justified the claim.
1 Bolton King, Mazzini, 116. ^ Dr. McLaren of Marichester, 46.
* J. B. Atlay, Bishop Ernest Wilberforce, 234.