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I asked the Schoolman: his advice was free
But scored me out too intricate a way.
I asked the Watchman, best of all the four,
Whose gentle answer could resolve no more
But that he lately left Him at the temple door.

Thus, having sought, and made my great inquest
In every place, and searched in every ear,
I threw me on my bed; but oh, my rest

Was poisoned with extremes of grief and fear Till, looking down into my troubled breast,

That magazine of wounds, I found Him there."

III

LOVE AND GOD IDENTIFIED

"God is love."-I JOHN iv. 8.

DR. R. W. DALE, in his Yale lectures, says, "He must be a bold man who would venture to preach on the text, 'God is love."" I am going to be so bold; and there must be many such bold men in our ministry, for I have heard and read several sermons on this text. But I have never met with any man who took the words literally just as they stand. Often have I heard the preacher call attention at the outset to the exact wording of the text-"God is love"; but I have invariably found as he proceeded with his discourse, that he virtually altered them into "God has great love-God is very loving-Love is predominant among His attributes.' Was that all John meant? When he said " God is love," was that only an oriental mode of expression, emphasizing the supremacy of love in the divine character? I think not. John was not only an oriental, but a mystic, and something deeper lies in his words.

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Stopford Brooke, in one of his six sermons on "God is a Spirit," observes that in order to form any adequate conception of God we must think of Him as both personal and impersonal. Thinking of

Him only as a person we miss something: thinking of Him only as a power we miss more. He is presented to us both ways in the pages of Scripture by different writers, and by the same writer in different passages. Thus, when the author of our text writes, "God so loved the world that He gave His Son," he speaks of Him as a person. When he writes, "God is love," he speaks of Him impersonally; for love is not a person, but a power. Let us get the right idea of love. Schleiermacher has defined love as the desire to be with another and in another. A helpful definition. But love is more than desire; it is living force. It is more than passion; it is power. Love is, let us say, the power that makes for union. That may be a novel definition, but see if it does not fit. Is it not the very essence of love to draw together, unite, and assimilate those who love? Is not love thereby distinguished from mere liking on the one hand, and mere benevolence on the other? We like persons and things for the pleasure they afford us, and in proportion to the amount of pleasure they afford. But however strong the liking it cannot be identified with love, for it is a purely selfish affection. On the other hand, we may be unselfish, we may regard a person with feelings of kindness, and be ready to make considerable sacrifices for his welfare; but if there be no tendency to draw near and associate with him in fellowship it is not love; it is only benevolence. But when something impels us to close intimacy with certain persons, to share not only our possessions, but our thoughts and feelings, to unite with them not merely in bodily proximity,

but in mind and heart and work, when it makes us want to live in their thoughts as they in ours-that impelling power we call love. It is a mighty power; it overleaps barriers; it pushes aside obstacles; it sets the mind to work in all manner of ingenious schemes to overcome the difficulties which stand in the way of union. In its stronger forms it is the most active emotion the human breast can entertain, and in its weaker forms it still bears this characteristic; it is always a power that makes for union. We speak of loving one's country, one's child, one's wife. The union to which the power of love impels in the several cases differs in degree. It is closer in proportion as the love is stronger; but in all cases it is a power that makes for union, and in none of these cases could we substitute the word liking for love. Who would speak of liking his child, or liking his wife? No: liking is not the word, because it leaves out just the one element which in love is all important-the impulse to share, cast in one's lot with, identify oneself with the object loved.

Now when we get hold of the true meaning of love we get hold of the true significance of our text. If love be the power that makes for union, and God is love, it teaches us to think of Him as the great invisible, living bond, holding together in one cosmos, what would otherwise be a mere gigantic assemblage of disparate atoms: a living bond, active not inert, acting now with gentle attractive force, now with terrific energy shattering the obstacles which hinder the more perfect union of the elements towards which union He is continually working.

You know Matthew Arnold spoke of God as "The not ourselves that makes for righteousness," and the phrase has lived because there is truth in it. But how much wider and deeper is the expression of the apostle-God is Love-the power, not ourselves, that makes for union! It covers all the ground of Matthew Arnold's definition, and much which that omits. No doubt the Deity in His moral aspect is the power that makes for righteousness, and that is included or follows as a matter of necessity if He is the power that makes for union. For between human beings there can be no enduring union without righteousness. All unrighteousness carries in it the seed of division and discord. Falsehood, malice, envy, injustice, uncleanness, deceit, selfishness are all separating, disintegrating forces. If the human race as a whole is ever to be drawn together in brotherhood, it can only be by the prevalence of righteousness. If we say that God is the power that everywhere makes for union then He must appear in history as the power that makes for righteousness.

But John's definition spreads wider and describes God not only in His relations with mankind, not only in His moral aspect, but in the whole range of His activities. The power that makes for union works differently according to the material on which it works, but it is always the same power. We may trace it operating in the lowest forms of existence, from the beginning of the world up to the present moment, only we call it by different names.

Ask the physicist what is the force which has made the earth a solid-crusted globe, out of what was in remote ages a mass of igneous vapour?

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