Thou doest well to call Me Master! Lord! She gives herself-she pours from her sad eyes Thou hast a treasure which thou dost withhold, I do accept thy service, though so cold Now to thy lofty soul let her unfold See how the lowly heart draws near to mine; Richmond. E. F. JESUS; THE PRINCE, THE PATTERN AND THE POWER OF LOVE. BY REV. H. B. MACARTNEY. "This is My commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you"-John xv. 12.] THERE was a river flowing through that upper chamber that memorable night, unheard, invisible; but deep and broad, and rapid; it was the river of Love, pouring from God the Father's bosom into the bosom of His Son, and from the bosom of His Son into the bosom of His disciples. But there its waters, like the waters of the Jordan pouring into the Dead Sea, were confined and perished. Finding no vent, no outlet, they became stagnant and bitter. The disciples certainly loved the Lord Jesus, but He observed, with infinite pain, that they did not love each other. This was the blemish in which Satan gloried, the one darkest of all spots in their Christian character; one so dark that it called forth that new commandment which has proved such a priceless benefit to the Church. Thus did the Saviour convert the sin of man and the wrath of devils into an instrument for His Father's glory. Yes, LOVE was wanting, terribly wanting, in that distinguished circle, and Jesus came to command, to illustrate, to bestow it. As the King of Love, He commanded it. Because "all His biddings were enablings," He was there to bestow it. And He presented HIMSELF as Love's Pattern. So that this one verse exhibits Jesus as (a) the Prince, (b) the Pattern, and (c) the Power of Love. THE PRINCE OF LOVE. He speaks as "This is My commandment." one having authority; as a Lawgiver; as a "King against whom there is no rising up" (Prov. xxx. 31). We are given no choice. His word is absolute. We are to love or to die. It is a "new command. ment" (ch. xiii. 34); not newly published, but re-cast; newly kept, newly exemplified. It once was, "Love thy neighbour as thou lovest thyself" (Lev. xix. 18). But self-love had become so hopelessly intertwined with selfishness that no one living could tell where self-love ended, and where selfishness began. Now, the great characteristic of the Lord Jesus was this-that He seemed to have no self, so that He was able to keep this second great command ment as God meant it to be kept, and as it had never been kept before; He understood it; He uncovered its meaning, and lived it out. Therefore it is called New, because it reads no longer, "Love as thou lovest thyself;" but because it reads, "Love as Jesus hath loved thee." What are we commanded to do? To love. Never was conviction of sin more gentle, more almighty. He did not say with anger and with asperity that they were destitute of love. He simply says, "Love ;" but there lay beneath that command the knowledge of the fact, or else the command would have been superfluous. That simple word "Love" is as full of wounds as it is full of healing. It carries this message to the soul—that love is wanting; it pierces and penetrates, and wakes up bitter recollections. Forms arise around us of those whom we cannot truly say we love-the form of someone contrary to us in business, contrary to us in the Church, contrary to us in the social circle, yea, even contrary to us in the home; it may be a servant, a brother, a sister, or, perchance, a husband, a wife, a parent! Alas, to have lived without love was to live in sin: and the wages of sin is death! But what is love? Love is desire. It is, in Saxon, to lean forward, to be drawn towards. It is the soul going forth from itself. It is the great heart of a man in motion towards an object-to take delight in it, to study it, to be near it, to embrace it. And what is the object presented to us here? Not the Lord Himself; not the Father; not the sinner; but the believer--the many memhers of the believing body. We are to love one another! The object is a compound one partly good, partly evil; partly Adam, partly Christ. This constitutes the difficulty of obedience. If believers were mainly or altogether holy, to love them would be easy. But the admixture, the preponderance of sin, the much of self, the little of God that we detect in them, makes obedience hard. Yet obedience is imperative. "This is My commandment!" THE LOSS OF NOT LOVING. "Owe no "This is hood." "Let brotherly love continue." Not to love is transgression. An unloving state is a state of sin; and a state of sin, to say the least of it, involves tremendous Loss. It involves a loss to God, a loss peculiarly grievous to His nature as a Father. He can pay no visit of love to a loveless heart, even though that heart be the heart of His child. It is only where love is that God unveils, comes to manifest Himself, and comes to tarry. Jesus said, "If a man love Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him; and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." (Ch. xiv. 23.) It involves a loss to ourselves. Where the spring of love is dry, there is a loss of ASSURANCE. "Hereby do we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. Whoso keepeth His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected; hereby know we that we are in Him" (1 John ii. 3-5). There is also loss of JOY. To have the emotion of love in the heart, even without a special Divine manifestation, is no ordinary pleasure. To have God Himself entering the garden of the soul is the most intense pleasure of which we are capable. To have neither love nor the God of love must be an indescribable loss. There may even be the loss of LIFE. "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 involves a loss to the whole Church. Observe the great stress which the Holy Spirit lays on obedience in this particular. "Love the brother- | clean. Souls are dying for want of love. Let us awake to righteousness and sin not. May God cleanse us from bloodguiltiness and keep us THE PATTERN OF LOVE. "As I have loved you." The Lord Jesus insists on love, and He is our pattern in love. A form, an image on which to gaze mentally, to which to conform our life, is as necessary to us as the image which God showed Moses was necessary to Bezaleel, the son of Uri, when constructing the tabernacle. He had, as we have, three essential things-the command, the power, and the pattern (Ex. xxxi.). a ceaseless tide, irrespective of the merits of its object. Oh, that I might knew where I might find it! I do know. It is in Jesus. It is "a perfume, a confection after the art of the apothecary, tempered together, pure and holy." There is no other like it in all the world. Christ's own love to His own children belongs to His own self. It is rare, peculiar, and alone. It is one and indivisible; but, blessed be His glorious name, it is transmissible; it is communicable. They who abide in Christ abide in the very atmosphere of His love; and all their garments smell of stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, and pure frankincense! It is a holy anointing oil from God, for Aaron and for his sons (Ex. xxx. 30, 38). No one should be without it. Christ's love for Christ's people at all times should occupy an immense space in every Christian heart. LOVE'S DEEDS. Jesus, to be a pattern of brotherly love, had to become a brother. To become a brother, He had to empty Himself of all His glory and to sit in dust! His was no love of yesterday; it was a love of remote antiquity, culminating now in sacrifice. If you want to measure His love, take the meanest angel in heaven's host as a point midway between what Jesus was and what He became. Behold that young man's countenance, it is like lightning! His beauty, it is to our eyes transcendent! His raiment, verily I say unto you, that even Solomon in all His glory was not arrayed like one of these! Take this least of all the angels, I say, as a central point, and measure upwards from him to the unutterable glory which Paul and John and Isaiah and Ezekiel and continued all night in prayer to God"? and when it Daniel saw, and measure downwards from him to the crimson corpse on Calvary, and you will only have measured one span of Jesu's infinite love. And yet His measure is our measure, our guide, our As He descended in love from the highest heights to depths untrodden, dread, unutter summons. able; so must the best, the richest of us descend to any place, how vile soever, where less than the least of all saints is lying, to any spot to which Jesus Himself would come, if He were here, to touch most loathsome diseases, to do most menial acts, to serve the mind, the body, or the soul. LOVE'S CONSTANCY. As a pattern of brotherly love, Jesus felt as a brother. One of the loveliest features of His love was its constancy. It was a constancy that knew itself, and knew that it could survive inconstancy in others. Fully aware that His disciples would desert Him in the hour of danger, still He said, "After that I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee." "Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end." To love, therefore, as He loved, we must by some means become possessed of a love that pours itself forth in of love hitherto unknown. His Church had, I know, was born He counted it and cared for it as His own request" Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am." But they are more to Him than companions. He includes them among His nearest and dearest-" Behold my mother and my brethren." Yea, beyond the exalted rank of kinsmen, He calls them into a still inner, more sacred circle, and makes them bosom friends (John xv. 15). How His love cares even for their bodies! He washes their feet. He numbers the hairs of their head. Fearless, He calms their ner vous fears with "Peace, be still." The Mighty One compassionates their human weakness, and crosses the rugged waters to relieve them when "toiling in rowing." Able Himself to fast for forty days, He remembers the pangs of their hunger; and when they were far out of sight He sees that they lack nothing. Himself taken prisoner, He cries, "Let these go their way." How His love cared for their understandings! How much had to be untaught! How simple His teaching! How wise in letting in the light of heaven little by little, as they were able to bear it, on the gross darkness and corruption of the mind! How He encourages conversation! How silent is He even in the presence of conspicuous faults, when faultfinding would do no good! Consider His love in sharing with them His glorious power over sickness, devils, and disease! Consider His love in being as one who had been deaf and blind in His previous intercourse with them, and meeting them sooner than He had promised, just after the flush and joy of Resurrection! What depth in a love that outlived habitual misunderstanding and unbelief! Never a word of His received as literally true! Himself never trusted! Judas, loving his money-bag more than the Master of heaven's mint, and all the eleven watching for a kingdom that should be brighter than their King! What love there was in His taking thought for their approaching necessities during the very moments that they were doubting, wrangling, and incredulous about His death! What love in providing, by anticipation, all the gifts, and all the strange emotions of Pentecost, and the overwhelming gladness, the new surprises of the Latter Day! Above all what love, not only in bearing with the sin, but in bearing the sin itself, in all its naked horrors-with all its crushing weight and killing curse! Brethren, we are commanded to love like thisto love now-to love even unto death-to lay down our lives for the brethren! Oh for such a love kindling in the soul; a love to others-to others whom Christ loves; a love that leans forward over the crag from which we are viewing the Church of Jesus in stern and dire necessity, labouring in the very fire, and, though the fire was hell itself, taking the final plunge! This is consecration to the cause of God, and love shrinks not from it. "O Lord, that I could waste my life for others, That I could pour myself into my brothers, THE POWER OF LOVE. This longing Christ alone satisfies. He can do so, because He is the Fount of Love, containing that very thing which you want within Himself. He does do so-First, by knowledge; by causing you to understand that love is only part of all His fulness, and that you have never perceived, or valued, or thirsted for, this portion of His fulness before-but that it is as free to you as any other part, such as pardon and peace. Secondly, by an act of consecration on your part, whereby all goods, time, tastes-all lusts, passions and proclivities, are rendered up and laid on the altar for burning-whereby every member of the body which used to serve sin is laid on the altar for service. Unlike the man of the world, who, by his "last will and testament," bequeaths everything that he possesses to his heirs and assigns for ever, and then returns to live as long as ever he can, and to make possession of his property by others as remote as possible-unlike this, I say, our act of consecration must be; a giving Christ instant possession of all that we carnally hold dear, a making Him the Heir and Lord of all, and then in an instantaneous death with Christ-His death on Calvary-a death in another's death, yet awfully, gloriously real-a death which should preclude the possibility of recovery to the old manner of life again. And lastly, by the prayer of faith, which, at the same moment, makes the request for love, and takes Christ, the Prince of Love, the thing requested, once to begin with, and ever onwards with a faith which groweth exceedingly; and by the study of the Word of God, which shows us what Jesus was in daily life, and what He is, and what He will be. Given this knowledge, this faith, this prayer, and this surrender, the issue is certain-Jesus rejoices, Jesus triumphs. His shout is the shout of a King. | me, the 20th verse of Rev. iii., 'Behold I stand at And now, brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart, fervently. Wherever there is a child of God, love him. No matter in what Church | he is, love him. No matter what sin has dominion over him, love him. No matter how much soever he may have wronged you, love him. Even if he contains in himself all those things which are most detestable in our eyes, he is dear to God; love him. Remember how Jesus said: "The Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved Me." "BECAUSE YE HAVE LOVED ME." Then I will take the man whom I least like; I will ask him: "Do you love my Lord who loved Me? Do you love Him whom my soul loveth?" And if he says "Yes," I will take him to my heart. I cannot do otherwise. "This is My commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you," in spite of all your sins. THE OVERCOMING LIFE.* Ar a private conference held near London, not long since, for the promotion of spiritual life, a wellknown and valued servant of Christ rose and told us how his heart had failed him as he pondered the promises made to the overcomers in the Book of Revelation. Over and over again he found it written, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in my throne," &c. Alas, he asked himself, how shall I ever claim rewards like these? How is it possible for us to overcome who are so often foiled? What is the secret, if there be any, of an overcoming Christian life? "As these thoughts passed through my mind," he added, "my eye fell on the verse before the one which was so perplexing Extract from "The Overcoming Life," by the Rev. E. W. Moore, M.A., Incumbent of Brunswick Chapel, Portman Square, W. London: S. W. Partridge & Co., 9, Paternoster Row. Cloth 1s. Ready December 1st. But some one who reads this may be ready to ask, "How is it possible for Christ to be found standing at the door of a believer's heart? Must He not necessarily be within the soul of one who is already His?" Alas! it is only too possible, and too common. Christ may be trusted in as a Saviour, and yet practically ignored as a Master, and as a Lord. The heart of man is as a palace with many chambers. There is the lofty vaulted hall of the understanding, there is the dimly-lighted corridor of the memory hung with pictures of the past, there is the pleasant sunny chamber of the affections looking south, there is the curiously constructed staircase of the imagination. with its many flights and noble prospects, but there is above all in the kingly palace of the human heart the throne-chamber of the will. You may have laid at Christ's feet the keys of every other door, but if you reserve to yourself the chamber of the will, if you refuse to give up to Christ your liberty of choice, if you refuse to yield when Christ's commands cross your inclinations, humble your pride, and thwart your purposes, then, alas! is the condition of the Laodicean Church reproduced in you. Self is on the throne, Christ is at the door, and your name is lost from the roll call of those who overcome. Christians may be more than conquerors through Him who has loved them. But if they would be so, they must be nothing, Christ must be ALL. In describing, as these pages attempt to do, some of the aspects of an overcoming Life, it is impossible to urge too strongly, or exhibit too clearly, this fundamental principle, "Christ is ALL." He must do all in us, as He has already done all for us. We must never confuse our responsibility with His. |