CHAPTER XX.

LOVE FOR THE BRETHREN A TEST OF OUR LOVE FOR GOD.

“Ef a man say, E love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen ?"-1 JOHN iv. 20.

IT

was remarked, at the opening of the last Chapter,

that the Holy Scriptures, which aim every where at the inculcation of principles rather than of sentiments, furnish practical tests for ascertaining how far we are under the influence of the love of God. One of these practical tests was considered in that Chapter. We saw that Mortification was the negative side of the love of God-that in proportion as a man really embraces "the things which are above" with true affection, in that proportion will he "mortify his members which are upon the earth."

A second practical test is furnished to us, in the passage at the head of this Chapter, by the Apostle of love himself. Any pretence to the love of God, in the absence of the love of our neigh

We

bour, is a delusion; what we think to be the love of God is in that case a mere sentiment, playing upon the surface of the soul, not a deeply-rooted principle which has the mastery of the will. And for this reason. God is an object of faith. His very existence is not made known to us by our senses. have to "believe that He is.' Our brother, on the other hand, is an object of sight. We come across him; we have dealings with him; we need not to make any effort of the mind to apprehend him; for his existence, his qualities, his character force themselves upon our attention every moment, as he walks side by side with us along the path of life. Now it is of course easier to

walk by sight than by faith.

And therefore it must be

easier, much easier, to realize our neighbour's existence than to realize the existence of God. And unless we thoroughly realize God's existence, it is out of the question that we can love Him.

Now just pause here to consider the bearing of what has been said. At first sight, and before we weigh the meaning of the terms we employ, it might seem to be easier to love God than our neighbour. For the idea of God, which we form (and which we ought to form) in our minds, embraces every perfection, and excludes every imperfection. We think of Him, and we are right in thinking of Him, as not only infinitely powerful and wise, but as infinitely loving, gracious, bountiful, truthful, just, and holy. Our neighbour, on the other hand, like ourselves, is compassed about with infirmities,

infirmities with which we come day by day into rude (and sometimes hostile) collision, infirmities forced upon us by the fact that we see him, and (if I may say so) feel him. He has hard angles, and we run up against them; awkward tempers, irritating eccentricities, ways which thwart our ways; he is vain and conceited, or he is cold and reserved, or he is ungracious, or even sometimes rude. And it often happens (which is very perverse in him) that the side which he turns to society is his unlovable side; he has much good in him which he never shows, and which nobody would believe to exist, were it not that character will in the long-run transpire to those around us, do what we will to throw a veil over it. Now this being the case with some, possibly with many, in whose company we have to travel along the path of life, we might be disposed to say, on being told that the love of our neighbour is much easier than the love of God; "How can this be? "A considerable degree of forbearance is necessary in "order to love my neighbour at all; but in God all is "lovely, all is gracious, all is beautiful, all is attractive "to the heart; God has no unamiable side; God (and "Christ, who is His Image) is the infinite Amiability, "and draws His children to His Bosom with those "allurements which are naturally engaging to the human "heart, with cords of a man, with bands of love.'"

How shall we maintain the Apostle's position against an objection of this kind? The answer is plain and very instructive. It is easier to have a certain senti

mental drawing towards an idea of God, than to love our brother. But then to have a sentimental drawing towards an idea of God, is not to love God. It is easy to construct in the mind a pretty imagination, and to feel charmed and fascinated by it; but this, if we go not beyond this, is loving an abstraction, not loving a person. Before loving a person, we must really and truly apprehend his existence; and in the case of a person whom we have not seen and cannot see, this true and realizing apprehension can only come from faith. Imagination is not faith, but only the natural faculty in man's heart which corresponds to faith. To imagine God is not to believe in Him. Any body can imagine God by a mere exercise of his natural powers. But no man can have faith in God as a living Person, on whom all things are momentarily dependent, but by the supernatural power of Grace. To grasp the Personality of God, to apprehend Him, not as a law, nor as an influence, but as an actually existent, conscious Being, who stands in certain close relations to us, and has dealings with us every moment, and so to apprehend this truth as to be brought under its power this, so far from being easy, is an arduous achievement. Whereas our brother's existence and character is obvious to the senses; there is no difficulty in realizing that. With God there are two processes to be gone through, the apprehending Him first, and then the loving Him. In our neighbour's case we have no more to do than to love him. The apprehension of

him comes in the course of nature, and as a matter of experience.

The love of our neighbour would require for its full and adequate discussion a separate treatise. In the present Chapter we can only consider its profound connexion with the love of God, (which will serve to fence off certain errors connected with the subject,) and the practical tests to which any profession of this love must be brought.

first, and for this love in our neighEvery soul has a

I. A word, first, on the intimate connexion subsisting between the love of God and that of our neighbour. The second is wrapt up in the reason. What we are required to bour is the image of God in him. fragment of this image in its lowest depth, though it may be overlaid by all manner of rubbish-infirmity, imperfection, frivolity, sin. There is some one point in which every soul is accessible to compassion and sympathy, or to an exhibition of truth which condemns it-some one echo, in short, which it is adapted to make to some one chord of truth and love,—some one spark (if it have not been quenched by persistence in wilful sin) of chivalrous, generous, heroic feeling. Just as in every mind also there is a capacity,-not, it may be, for the usual class of acquirements, nor for those which yield a return in the way of honour and emolument, but for something. Every human intelligence can construct something or imagine something; it has a power of development in a certain direction, or it