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It lies beyond our province to discuss the more properly theological questions which arise out of this scriptural doctrine of the love of God—its bearings, e.g., on the doctrine of the Trinity (cf. Sartorius, Doctrine of the Divine Love, p. 8 tt., Eng. tr.) ; or its relation to Creation, and the supreme ethical end (οἵ. Ritschl, Recht. wnd Ver. iii.* pp. 263-266). It is a tempting, and not baseless, speculation, that, as love in its essential nature has relation to another, and involves, in its fulness, surrender and self-communication to another, so, if love and fatherhood are to be predicated eternally of God, there must be self-distinction and sonship also within the divine essence (for the world and human spirits, as non-eternal, contingent, and finite, can- not be adequate objects of this eternally complete, and infinite, and active love of God). It is a speculation, however, which lies, in this form, beyond Scripture, though the NT doctrine of the Trinity throws back light on it, and it has a point of relation to the recognition of the Son in the Gospels as the peculiar object of the Father’s knowledge and love (Mt 317 11*/ 1918. Jn 5° ete.).
ii. Love IN MAN.—The primary and unalterable duty of man, in both OT and NT, is to love God with all his mind, and heart, and soul, and strength (Dt 65, Mt 2937. 88. Mk 12%-83), This obligation is based in part on the natural relation of man to God as created and dependent (Dt 8! 18, Ps 9557 100%, Is 18); but specially on the morally perfect character of God (Mt 5%, Mk 10!8); and, above all, on the fact that God is Himself a Being of Love—
LOVE
this, too, not simply in a general respect, but as: p Ἧ g Pp
having manifested His love in gracious relations to ourselves. ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,’ ete. (Dt 65). In OT it is the superabounding grace of God in His relations to Israel in the covenant (Dt 42-14 92-40 772. 18.22 199 gol-14 Pg 511 3138. 116), ts 54, Hos 11! 14, etc.); in NT it is the love of God in Christ (Ro 8585: 89. 121, 1Co 2°, Eph 2#10, 1 Jn 419) which is the ground of obligation. It is evident how far we are here from the abstract grounds of natural theology. This love, moreover, is no mere sentiment, or excitement of feeling, but is connected in both OT and NT with an obedient will and the keeping of God’s commandments (Dt 6, Jos 22°, Is 110-18. Mt 771-8, Jn 14:6 159-14 etc. ). ‘This is the love of God,’ St. John says emphati- cally, ‘ that we keep his commandments’ (1 Jn 5%). The scriptural love to God is thus entirely practical, it is also intelligent, and fed through growing knowledge (‘thy mind’; cf. Eph 117- 15. 317-18 etc.). It will specially manifest itself in the intelligent adoption of the ends of God’s kingdom as our own (Mt 6%). The love of God thus enspheres the being of the true child of God; it is shed abroad in the heart (Ro 55); the soul dwells in love, i.e. dwells in God and God in it (1Jn 418). But this feeling and enlargement of the heart in love to God, and experience of the love of God, cannot remain self-contained. It spontaneously overflows in love to others, and yearns with the desire to bring them within the same circle of blessing. Specially will it feel a peculiar delight in those whe are within the same sphere of love as itself. The love of God thus necessarily issues in love to our brother; and so imperative is this connexion, that where the latter does not exist, we are warranted in declaring that the former is absent also (1 Jn 34-17 47-8),
Love to man has thus its spring and principle in love to God, and here a wider and a narrower sphere is recognized—the one, the entire human family ; the other, the peculiar brotherhood in Christ (Gal 6, 1 P 2°). The grounds on which this duty of love is based are entirely different from those of philosophical ethics. The stoical ideal of a brotherhood of reason remained an
LOVE
unrealized dream. The ethics of Jesus laid the foundations of a true love to man in spiritual relation to God, and the destination to sonship in His kingdom. A brotherhood arises out of the Fatherhood. If we inquire more narrowly into the biblical development of this great duty of the
ospel, we find the principle in which the whole is involved already enunciated in OT, though its full scope and bearing were not apparent under the Old Covenant. It is from Leviticus (1918) that Jesus quotes the precept, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,’ as one of the two ‘great commandments on which hang all the law and tlx prope (Mt 229% ὁ Mk 12%); evenas He declares of His enunciation of ‘The Golden Rule’—‘ for this is the law and the prophets.’ The question was as to the breadth of the signification of the term ‘neighbour’; and while here also the correct principle was already involved in the doctrine of the oneness of the human family as made in the image of God (Gn 157), and in the truth of one God of the spirits of all flesh (Nu 16%), it was alien to the modes of thought of antiquity, and perhaps was impossible to the Hebrews under the peculiar limitations of their national economy, to give to this pregnant term ‘neighbour’ a universal appli- eation. (How few do so even now under Christian teaching!) It is certain in any case that they. did not give it this wider scope ; and it was reserved for Jesus to correct ‘ particularism’ here also, and, in the light of His broad, universal doctrine of God and man, to lift this duty to its proper level of unlimited obligation. Our ‘neighbour,’ He teaches in the parable of the Good Samaritan, is every man without distinction of nationality (Lk 10*°-*7); and the obligation of love is eaten to embrace even enemies (Mt 58), the pattern in this case being the example of the Father in heaven. (‘The germ is found here also in OT both in precept and example, Lv 1917-18, 1S 24. 26, Ps 75). This prin- ciple, then, becomes in Christian morality the single principle in which all duty to our fellow-men is summed up, for it requires, comprehensively, that we do our neighbour no injury (Ro 13"), but do him all the good we can; it requires even that we overlook his wrongs to us, and strive to over- come his evil with our good (Ro 12!**!); and it furnishes the only, but all-powerful motive, through which this discharge of duty can be accomplished. He who loves his neighbour as himself will not, 6.7.» kill him, will not steal from him, will not bear false witness against him, will not covet his possessions (Ro 13°). But this love will further change these negative precepts into positive ones, and lead him to seek his neighbour’s highest well-being in soul and body. In this one word, therefore, as it is repeatedly said, the whole law is fulfilled (Ro 185}, Gal 54, Ja 28), The example of Jesus in His earthly life is again the interpretation to us of the depth and range of this precept, alike in its practical beneficence, its mreE oD for the lost, its forgiveness of injuries, and its voluntary self sacrifice, even unto death, for others (Ae 10%, Ro 153, He 1278, 1 P 2°14 1 Jn 416 ete.). How high and wide-reaching the spiritual requirements of this law of love are—how love is patient and kind; excludes envy; is humble; not easily pro- voked; does not impute motives; mourns over iniquity, and rejoices in truth; endures wrong; believes the best ; where it cannot believe, hopes ; where it cannot even hope, suffers—is magnificently brought out in that incomparable hymn of love chanted by St. Paul in 1 Co 13. In this prin-