Love is the fullness of all Christian graces. The apostle urging to the complete development of the divine nature which we have received (2 Pet. 1:5-7.), ends necessarily with love, as the perfection of this, beyond which he cannot go, for God is love. At the same time it is manifestly, and for the same reason, that out of which all else is developed. How important the right apprehension of what is so vital to all practical Christianity!

Even the world does homage to it, by making it essential to good manners to assume its livery, however little it may care for the reality of service. The Christian, walking as such, is. that which the world would fain get credit for, apart from that which alone produces it, which in fact it is unable even to discern.

Even with the Christian, not only, as all would own, is there failure in practice, but a very great want of apprehension of the thing in itself. In nothing perhaps do we make greater mistakes; although I doubt not we shall find, what is so serious to find, that these mistakes are not so much real errors of judgment as self-deceptions. Alas! down in the bottom of our hearts there may be a truer knowledge which we dare not admit even to ourselves we have. The apostle's warning, " Let love be without dissimulation," may it not apply, not only to the grosser imposition practiced upon another, but also to these deeper forms of self-deceit?

Love is not rightly tested by emotion, although the consciousness of it should assuredly be ours. Love is an emotion, but we dare not take the witness of our own hearts about it; therefore he who most speaks of it in Scripture most insists on the necessity of testing it by what it produces practically in our lives:" Hereby we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments." In fact, in how many ways may we mistake here! Social feeling, amiability, even the satisfaction we take in what ministers to personal gratification may all usurp the name. And even where the test is made a practical one, how often is the liberality, so called, which is mere indifference to truth and good,-liberality in the things of another, not our own,-a servant's liberality in dispensing with his master's commandments,-miscalled by this blessed name! We have therefore to test practically, and according to the Word:"This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments."

It is its character manward that the apostle is speaking of in the thirteenth of first Corinthians, and indeed especially toward the children of God, and members of Christ's body. In the chapter before, he has been speaking of that body, and of the "gifts," the several parts in their relation to the whole. In the following chapter he goes on to consider the use of these gifts for edification in the assembly. Here, he is speaking of the spirit in which alone this mutual service could be rightly carried out-the spirit of devotion to the common blessing-the love of that which Christ loved and gave Himself for. The love of God, although unnamed, characterizes it of course all through, and two properties are plain in it,- self-forgetfulness in devotion to the good of others, and holiness. Light has to come into the definition of love, or it could not be divine love.

And how clearly we see at the outset where it has been learned, as the streams bear witness of the lands in which their birth-springs are! For "the long-suffering of the Lord is salvation," and therefore "love suffereth long and is kind." Not passive merely can be what is so learned; inspired of the great sacrifice, it must have the same character. "He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren:" so says one who has learned; and that he was an apostle does not subtract from the value of the lesson. But how much shall we find of this apostolic character? It is little, as it would seem, to say after this, " Love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up:" more suited perhaps, for that reason, to these days of littleness. How can it envy the good it is ever seeking to convey? In which it must therefore rejoice wherever found. Yet here, what a wealth of joy for those who can find in every joy another has the material for their own! How easy for such to understand the Lord's words as to receiving "now, in this time, houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and lands" ? and what will heaven be, where the joy of each will be in fact thus the joy of all? The Church is God's method for the realization of this even now. Why, O why, is it not more realized? Why does such an interpretation of our Lord's words seem dreamy and far-fetched to those for whom the words of the apostle are but an unworked mine of treasure-"And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me"?

This individualizing appropriation of Christ it is which divorces from self, and which alone does. It is then " no more I that live, but Christ liveth in me;" and " what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ." It is not enthusiasm, but the soberest possible estimate of "unsearchable riches." Do you not wonder at the man who has millions he can never spend, toiling to accumulate hundreds? But that is nothing to the folly of pursuing what, if gain to me, separates me in heart and interest thus far from Him in whom alone I really live.

This is our qualification for the accomplishment of the central words of this definition, " Love seeketh not her own." She has no need; she is no beggar, but a Prince's daughter, rich enough to pour out wealth with both hands. The luxury of the rich is to give:" It is more blessed to give than to receive." He who is over all, blessed forever, who, "though He was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich," has left us, not a precept merely, but an "example, that we should walk in His steps." This is path and power in one. "His steps"! Yes, but without the awful shadow to which on our account those steps of His led down! No; " the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day."

Sorrow? Yes, sorrow is on every path; but for them in whose heart are the ways, the valley of Baca becomes a well; the rain also filleth the pools:they go from strength to strength.

Is it necessary to argue that the love which draws its motive from such a source will be holy? Only for those who do not know what sin is, or have forgotten at what cost they were purged from it. Or is it necessary to plead that not natural conscience, but the Word alone, can give us the measure of sin? If to me to live be Christ, what is not Christ is sin. There is nothing neutral-nothing negative merely. The measure of a Christian life is, "As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk ye in Him." Love cannot possibly forget that, for it must have its object:"the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."

To imitate love is vain, even though its excellence is seen; and so it is, therefore, to imitate a degree of love which we have not. Are we, then, to sit down baffled, to complain, " The good that I would I do not" ? Assuredly not. Christ is, as I have said, power as well as pattern. " If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink," is our whole, our abundant resource. Thus, and thus only, " he that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."