"Ask, else, these ruins of humanity,
This flesh worn out to rags and tatters,
This soul at struggle with insanity,
Who thence take comfort, can I doubt,
Which an empire gained, were a loss without."
The love of God is the soul of Christianity. Christ is the body of that
truth. The love of God is the creating and redeeming, the forming and
satisfying power of the universe. The love of God is that which kills
evil and glorifies goodness. It is the safety of the great whole. It is
the home-atmosphere of all life. Well does the poet of the "Christmas
Eve" say:--
"The loving worm within its clod,
Were diviner than a loveless God
Amid his worlds, I will dare to say."
Surely then, inasmuch as man is made in the image of God nothing less
than a love in the image of God's love, all-embracing, quietly excusing,
heartily commending, can constitute the blessedness of man; a love not
insensible to that which is foreign to it, but overcoming it with good.
Where man loves in his kind, even as God loves in His kind, then man is
saved, then he has reached the unseen and eternal. But if, besides the
necessity to love that lies in a man, there be likewise in the man whom
he ought to love something in common with him, then the law of love has
increased force.
Pages:
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269