This is a mark, a fruit of love, and where there I is suspicion, evil surmisings, the first love has dimmed, its energy has been left, and evil is coming in. The first fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22, is "love," and love thinketh no evil. Now among the people of God Satan is ever laboring to bring about the opposite of this, seeking to lead Christians to think evil one of another. And it would be far better for them to know the danger, "and guard against it, than to be led into soul destroying suspicion and other sins. It is not the Holy Spirit which we have of God which leads us to watch our fellow believers, to see evils in them, to suspect evil where we do not see it, to attribute to them wrong motives, desires and aims. Remember this, and that all this vile brood are works of the flesh, are the old nature acting within us.

Love does not lead to any such feelings or uprisings from within. When it sees failure in others, it loves, pities, prays for the failing ones, is sorry for them, and carries them to the Lord. There is no rejoicing in the finding of evil in another, no publishing it abroad, but in humbleness confessing it to "God.

It is a fact that a great deal of the trouble which rises among the real people of God originates in thinking evil where there is none, or in thinking there is much more that is wrong than there really is. In other words, a lack of the love that thinketh no evil is the root from which many of the evils which afflict gatherings of believers spring. Whether there are two or two hundred or more children of God, they need to watch lest love ceases to burn brightly, and suspicion takes the place of true brotherly love. How often lack of true love has embittered the relations between two laborers who have been led to go out into the work together.

All saved ones need to recognize the danger of this, need to realize that the allowing of surmising, dwelling upon the failings and faults of others, talking about them, throwing out innuendoes, making disparaging remarks concerning those who are the children of God, all these are steps downward, steps away from the light and love of God, and that it is often from such beginnings that the greatest troubles among Christians arise.

We need to fear and hate all these actings of the flesh in ourselves, to go to the Lord for grace to deliver us from them. We need to have the ways of our Lord Jesus Christ always before us, the love that shone out in all His blessed life amid all the sad scenes through which He passed on His way to the cross. Love is to be without dissimulation, is to be humble and lowly, we are to ever esteem others better than ourselves. We need to be so very careful lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble us, and thereby many be denied. Love is the remedy for so many of the evils which afflict believers, and love is of God. He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ? Let us remember that we may leave our first love, and that one of the symptoms of our having left it is the harboring suspicions against those who are the Lord's.

J. W. N.