LOVE THE SUM OF CHRISTIANITY.

BY REV. JOHN MCCLINTOCK, D. D.,

PASTOR OF ST. PAUL'S METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NEW YORK.

God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.-1 John, iv, 16.

We find three things in this text: first, the theology of Christianity-"God is love;" second, the experience of Christianity-the Christian "dwells in God, and God in him;" and third, the morals of Christianity-the Christian "dwells in love." And these are the three points to which I invite your attention.

First, we have the theology of Christianity. By theology, we mean the doctrine of God. There is a wider sense in which the word is used, to include all the doctrines of any system of religion; and in that sense, the phrase Christian theology denotes the whole sum of the doctrines of Christianity. I use it now in the narrower and proper sense, to denote what we know of God. And the theology of Christianity thus defined is summed up in this one single sentence, "God is love."

There is a great mystery in all existence.

The humblest and low

est forms of life are mysterious. How much greater is the problem of the supreme Life! In all ages, it has been an insoluble problem for the unaided human intellect. I shall not dwell upon the history of the strivings of the human mind to obtain a knowledge of the supreme Life. It is enough for me to recall to your minds what you know of this history; in all ages, a sad and painful one. In all the development of humanity, there is nothing nobler, yet nothing more sad, than its dim, sore "questionings of sense and outward things;" questionings that could find no answer, because sense and outward things cannot reveal a spirit; the "blank misgivings of a creature" that knew not its Creator, and could hardly imagine a Cre

ator; vanishings of thought in utter darkness and tears. This is the history of the human mind, in its search after God, apart from His own revelation.

I will only hint one word upon what is called philosophical religion, whether within or without the sphere of Christianity. This, too, has failed, because it has not distinguished the thinking faculty in man from the moral and spiritual part of our nature. The thinking faculty, pursuing its solitary career, will not stop short of a demand for the absolute. Yet the absolute of the human mind is simply the unlimited, and that, again, is simply a negation of things and qualities in ourselves. The science of God, thus obtained, consists in a set of barren formulas. But the moral nature of man, from an inward necessity, demands a living being, demands faith in a living and a personal God. And the Christian revelation, brethren, comes to us as moral beings, and comes to the wants of our moral nature, postponing the other or merely logical demand. I say, plainly and boldly, postponing the other-putting that behind this. Christianity comes up to the wants of our moral nature, and promises to meet them.

And how does Christianity meet them? By the simple utterance of my text, "God is love." When human hearts are worn and weary, when the human mind fails and gives up its search, both mind and heart may find rest and peace, if they seek it, in this blessed revelation of God-in this richest of all the utterances of this Book, "God is love." This theology does not mean simply that God is the source of love. We are sometimes apt, I think, to enfeeble it in this way to take away the vital force and power of it, by supposing that this declaration, "God is love," simply means that God is the fountain of love. It is something more, my brethren. Perhaps a word or two of the history of the interpretation of the text may explain better what I mean here. The earlier interpreters took the passage in its simple meaning, with direct reference to the wants of the human soul. Socinus and others since his time, make the love of God here purely figurative—an illustration, simply, of the divine mode of working, by the use of a human analogy. A better interpretation is given by Calvin, namely, that it is the nature of God to love man. Yet even this is a limitation of the doctrine of the text, confining it to the relation between God and man. Luther, following Augustine, with that strong grasp of the inner spirit of the Word of

God which characterizes him above all other interpreters, even where his actual power of criticism might have failed, interprets this passage, simply and correctly, to mean that love is the essence of the being of God; that God is love, and essentially nothing else than love. So strongly does he put it as to convert the proposition, and say that "love is God." John Wesley and others, who may be called the theologians of the higher Christian life, follow Luther.

And now let me say, that when we have this conception in its fulness, it first satisfies the demand of the heart, and then takes up and meets that other demand, which was postponed and put aside-the demand of the intellect. Christianity comes to the heart first, and seeks to fill it; and when the want of the heart is met once by such a revelation coming to the soul as a reality, then the fulness of the heart expands and fills the intellect as well. There is no want even of the logical faculty left unsupplied. Let us look into this, and see how it is. God is love, and essentially love. Does not this imply a personal God, in the first place? The great want of the logical faculty is an absolute. But all experience shows that no course of human inquiry has resulted in the knowledge of an absolute, and, at the same time, personal God. The last results, in the older systems, say Hindooism and Buddhism, are the ideas of absolute quiescence, of rest, or of nonbeing. The logical character of this doctrine might be vindicated, perhaps, as well as any other with reference to God, apart from Christianity. Later researches, professing to be scientific, have ended in making the whole universe (not the manifestation of God, but) God Himself, and thus give us Pantheism, instead of Theism. But take the proposition, God is love, and let it fill the heart, and let the intellect go to work upon it; and it will find satisfaction. If God is love, then God is a personal being. There cannot be love without a personal, vital activity; we can't conceive it. So, then, the logical issue of the proposition in my text is, that there is a divine person, a God, to whom we can speak and say, "O Thou!" One of the bitterest utterances that I ever heard was the saying of a great philosopher and divine of Germany, a man of pure and noble thinking faculties, and of noble moral faculties as well, but who had bewildered himself for years in mazes of thought, apart from the simple lines of Christian logic that is, the logic of the heart. In speaking of this question, the love of God, he said to a friend of mine, "I have met several English and American divines and theologians, of the evangelical

school, so called, and I never met one of them that did not seem to recognise a personal God." The tears came into his eyes as he continued: "If I could do as you do-kneel down at night, and say to God, "O Thou!"-if I could say that, and feel it, I should be willing to die, and happy to die." I am very glad to say that his soul has since emerged into a higher and purer light and experience. But I state the case to show you what trouble, pain, and sorrow, may come of not getting this full Christian conception of God, through the experience of the heart.

In saying that "God is love," we mean, further, that He is a being whose very nature is to reveal Himself, to impart Himself, to diffuse to others His own essential bliss. So, then, we get these two thoughts, as well as the great richness and fulness of the feeling, God is lovefirst, there is a personal God; and second, He is a God that must reveal Himself, for love is His essence. Love is nothing if it is not revealing; love is nothing if it does not impart itself. Love is always gushing forth; it dies when it is concealed, when there are no manifestations allowed, or possible to it. You know, in your own affections, when they are strongest, they are always going out towards another object. So, then, we get from this idea of God the divine doctrine of the blessed Trinity-the manifestation of love in His Son through the Eternal Spirit. Here we find the key of all these rich, beautiful, yet otherwise mysterious phrases in John's Gospel, in which it speaks of the eternal love of the Father towards the Son, and of the glory shared between the Father and the Son, long before the world was. And from this idea of a revealing and manifesting God, we get also the true doctrine of the creation and of the universe. If "God is love," it is easy to explain the wondrous beauty and order of the "Cosmos." Love is essentially creative. Have you ever thought of that? The very primal function of love upon the earth is creative and productive. And so, all the splendor and all the magnificence of the physical universe, with all its adaptations to the wants and to the culture of humanity, are fruits of the love of God, the creating, the imparting love. But the highest manifestation of the creative love of God is that shown in making man a spiritual being, capable of reflecting God, made in God's image, endowed with free will and conscience. And the love was none the less, that this creation included the dread gift of conscience and of free will, implying the possibility of sin and fall. Of

the history of that fall I need not dwell, further than to say that it opens for us again the highest and richest manifestation of the love of God, after all. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that "God sent His only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him." And what a summing up of our knowledge of God's love to man is contained in the words, " God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Can we fail to draw the inference, with St. Paul, that the love which makes such a gift will spare no other gift? "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" He "spared not" His own Son! There is no extremity of pain and sorrow that was not put upon that beloved Son. There is no intensity of anguish and torment that He did not undergo. God "delivered Him up for us all." "Delivered" Him? What does that mean? It means that He gave Him to endure every form of evil, and submitted Him to every possible agent and minister of evil-to evil of mind and heart and soul and body; to evil from devils, from bad spirits, and from men-that He might show His love for sinners. Delivered Him to the evil passions of men, stirred and empoisoned by the malice of devils; to their envy, which surrendered Him; to their treachery, which betrayed Him; to their cruelty, which scourged Him; to their pride, which scorned Him. "He spared not His own Son!" He that spared Isaac in the wilderness when Abraham, his father, was about to lift the knife; He whose infinite heart of love could not allow the son of that Arabian wanderer to die a sacrifice, but provided a ram that should take his place; He that spared Isaac, spared not His own Son! When His hour came, there could not be found in all the universe a lamb to take His place; for He was the "lamb slain from the foundation of the world." We can never weary of looking at the cross, as the highest manifestation of the love of God. O, let us look at it to-day, and say, "God is love!" O, Lamb of God, was ever pain, was ever love, like Thine? It was the infinite love of the Father manifested in the gift of His beloved Son!

II. The next point is, the experience of Christianity-the Chris