J B THE SWORD AND THE TROWEL. JUNE, 1866. Christ-like Love. WHAT IS IT? WHENCE COMES IT? HOW DOES IT DISPLAY ITSELF? "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. "He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love," &c.-1 John iv. 7-12. HE great end and aim of God in Christianity is to bring men to be like himself. When God made Adam at first, he made him in his own image; but if Adam had persevered in holiness he would no doubt have attained to a far higher degree of likeness to God than he had at first. But when a soul is brought to Christ and born again, it is God's purpose, I believe, to make that soul far more like himself than unfallen Adam ever was or ever would have been. It seems probable that this was one grand reason why God permitted man to fall; that he might bring redeemed sinners to a far higher state of holiness than unfallen souls could have attained to. God let the pleasant vessel fall out of his hands and be dashed in pieces, just that he might gather up the broken fragments, and out of them make a new vessel, a thousand times more beautiful and glorious, and like to himself than the first ever could have been. There is reason to think that one of the white-robed spirits before the throne is ten thousand times more like Christ than unfallen Adam ever was, or ever would have been. He is more like Christ than even the angels are. In what respect? In holy love. "God is love." If you wanted to describe the true character of God in one word, you would say, "God is love;" not that there are no other perfections in God; every perfection dwells infinitely in him; but love colours all, tinges all, animates all, just as you have seen in an advanced Christian; he may have many good faculties, a clear understanding, a fine memory, good taste, lively imagination, still every one of his faculties are coloured, tinged, made fragrant by a gentle, holy love. Love is uppermost in all he says, in all he does, in all he thinks; in his eye, in his *Copied from the Author's own unpublished manuscript. R hand. So is it with God in an infinite degree. Just as in a king's cabinet there may be one drawer full of precious stones, another full of gold and jewels, another full of coins, and another full of soft raiment, yet, if there be another full of musk, or some fragrant aromatic, it will lend its fragrance to the whole cabinet; every drawer will partake of the delicious odour. So it is in the heart of our God. There are unsearchable riches there of wisdom, holiness, justice, and truth; but all are scented with this one holy love. Now, when we come to Christ, we partake of this love, we get this stream from the heart of God, we are united to him who is love in another way than the angels are, and therefore, we can love more than the angels can. The heart is changed into a flame, a burning coal of love. Let us trace this wonderful change. I. Natural men have none of this holy love. To show this, I remark, that natural men have no love to God. If there were any holy love at all it would show itself towards God; but natural men have not a particle of love to God in their hearts. We are all born without any. A man is born with love to his father, and with love to his mother. The babe clings naturally to its mother's breast, and will not be torn from it; but the same child does not naturally cling to the breast of God. Just as in a dead body there is not a spark of life; so in a natural man there is not a spark of love towards God. Natural men differ very much in some things; one is kind and amiable, another is fiery and ill-tempered; one is outwardly irreproachable, another is stained with every crime; yet all agree in this one thing,-they have no love to God. Oh! search your hearts and you will find it so. (1.) By your flying from God. When you love any one, you love their company, you love to be much with them, you love to exchange thoughts with them-to hear their sweet voice and to speak back in gentle words to them. But natural men do not love the company of God; they do not love to be much with God, or to exchange thoughts with him; they do not love to hear God's voice, or to speak their mind to him. I put it to you, Do you not dislike to be alone with God? You love always to be alone with men,-to be engaged in the bustle of business, or in the whirl of pleasure. God is not in all your thoughts. Does not this show you do not love God? Do you not dislike secret prayer? In public prayer you can think about other things; but to go into a room, and shut the door, and meet with God in secret, this you cannot bear. Does not this show you do not love God? If you loved him, would you not love to meet him? Some say, "I have not time." This is only a lie. If you search your heart you will see that you have time for other things which you love better. If you loved any one, surely you would have time to speak a word to them now and then. You have time to sit and be idle again and again in the day, or to talk with poor wretched worms of the dust, and you have plenty of time to pray if you were so inclined; but you do not love God. But, (2.) They have a mortal hatred at God. This I shall show you from an old divine. He says, "Natural men have that enmity in their hearts that strikes at the life of God." "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God," or rather "no God," I would have none. Let the world be without a God, for he stands in the way. The viper's poison is deadly poison, and when he bites he seeks our precious life. Men, in this respect, are a generation of vipers. The divine nature being immortal, and infinitely out of their reach, there is no trial of this possible, but only for God to take on him the human nature, so as to come within man's reach. And what has been the event? Why, whenever God became man, and came down here to dwell among vipers, they hated and persecuted him, and never desisted till they had imbrued their hands in his blood. All cried out, "Crucify him, crucify him." Nothing would restrain them from it-not even all his preaching all his miracles-but they would kill him. This shows man's enmity to God in its true colours. Ah! my friends, do you think your hearts are very different from the hearts of the Jews? You are just the same till grace convert you. Ah! surely you will say, "I am like a beast before thee." (3.) By dislike of all that are like God. When you love any one, you love their children, and treat them kindly for the sake of their parents, especially if the children are like their parents-if they have the same features the same expression of countenance-the same disposition of mind-you love them all the more. Still more if the parents are dead, or in a foreign country, you love to show your love to them by loving their children whom they have left behind. If you loved God, my dear friends, you would love his children, especially if they have much of God's features in them. The more they have of God's features in them, the more they have of Christ in them, the more you would love them; still more, since Christ is away, and they are left like orphans in the world. Try yourselves by this. Do you not dislike God's children? The more unlike you are to him, the more you avoid them: you do not make companions of them; you do not cleave to them. Let the secret fully out. You do not love God. But I come now II. To consider the change that takes place when a man comes to Christ. "If any man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new." In nothing is this change so remarkable as in this-the man now loves. He loves an unseen God-he loves an unseen Saviour. He feels a new affection. springing up in his heart to all that have any of the image of Christ. He loves Christians whom he has never seen in the flesh. He receives a flame of love—a burning coal of love. (1.) Consider the spring of this love. It is in God: "Love is of God." Just as the source of the Nile is far up in the mountains of Interior Africa, where the eye of man never penetrated, so the source of this love is in the heart of God, far above the gaze of the men of this world. Love is of God; it is not of man. You may gain much knowledge from man. Your heart may be excited with a momentary blaze by coming near a good man; but if you would receive this stream of love into your heart, you must go to the bosom of God-to the bosom of Christ. It is not in books. You may get much learning from books, much information about God and about Christ, still you must go to the fountain in the bosom of God, if you would know what this love meaneth. It is not of the world. The men of this world have not a drop of this love in their hearts; they have much natural love, that is amiable and delightful; they have much romantic love, that is false and vain; they have polluted love, THAT comes from hell. But they have no holy love to give you. If you go to the world, you will come back with your pitchers empty. Of all the disciples, John seems to have had most of this stream of divine love flowing into his breast; he had peculiar tenderness for the world: what a heart for those whom he calls "Little children"! Where did he get it? Here he tells us, "Love is of God." He got it by leaning on the bosom of Christ. It is there alone you will get it. It is by remaining there you will get it constantly supplied. Consider, Have you (2.) The nature of this love. First: It is a delicate love. Hear its language: Beloved, let us love one another." True, a soul in Christ has mercy for the whole world, he is merciful as his Father in heaven is merciful; but he has a peculiar love to them that are in Christ and like Christ. He cannot love every one; he cannot unbosom himself to every one. He loves all who are like Christ. The more like they are to Christ he loves them the more. The only thing that keeps back the tide of his love is that wherein they differ from Christ. this peculiar love? It springs from the bosom of a reconciled God. If you have it not, you have not seen him nor known him. Second: it is self-denying. Hear its language: "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." The world will give what it will not miss-give it freely-give it with an air; but Christian love begins where worldly love ends. The same spirit that moved God to give his Son, moves a soul in Christ to give up anything God would have for Christ. If we have the love of God in us we will make sacrifices for Christians. God spared not his own Son for that soul; do you grudge him a little of your substance? Do try yourselves by this, and see if you have the spirit of Christ, or only the spirit of the world. Third: it is a Godlike love. Verse 12, "No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." There is a devilish love as well as a Godlike love. There is, perhaps, no way in which Satan ruins more souls, than by filling them with unholy love. You may know Satan's love by these things. It seeks not the real good of its object. It seeks only its own gratification. It seeks not for a likeness to Christ in its object. You may be sure if you love any one, but not for anything Christ-like in them, it is Satan's love. It does not look into eternity. If you love another, but it is only for time, if you have no regard to eternity in it, then you may be sure it is Satan's love. But the Christian's love is from God, and is pure as God himself. It is the pure, gentle, lovely Spirit of God moving in the heart. Oh, get Satan cast out of your heart, and get this pure Spirit instead, then you will know what it is to love one another out of a pure heart fervently. Fourth: It is never-failing. "Love never faileth." When water comes from a fountain, then it never fails; but there is no fountain so unfailing as the heart of God. "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." The sun may grow weary of shining, the tides may grow weary of flowing; but the Spirit of God abides with us for ever. When he once takes up his dwelling in the heart, it is for eternity. Natural men have no stability about them. To-day they may be kind, to-morrow they may be your deadly enemies. When the world goes well with us they will be our friends. When distress comes on our dwellings, then they will fly away. Worldly friends are like the butterflies, they come out when the sun shines, but retire when the storm comes on. But are you in Christ? then your love is for ever. In summer and winter shall it be. You will love till the last breath, and in eternity we shall meet you again full of the same holy love. Love never faileth. Examine yourselves by this. Have you this love? Many persons are able to speak much for Christ. They have the tongue of an angel; but have you this love? If not, you are but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. You are no more a Christian than a brazen trumpet, or a pair of dashing cymbals. Some have a great deal of knowledge; understanding all mysteries, and able to explain deep parts of the Bible. Have you love? For if not, you are nothing. Some are very kind to the poor, even extravagantly so, so that they leave it in their will that their body is to be burned to save the expense of burying. Have you love to Christ and to his people? For if not, alas! all else will profit you nothing. Amen. 66 Outlines of the Life of John Vine Hall.* PE BY J. A. SPURGEON. EACE hath her victories not less renowned than war," and there be heroes who never slept upon a tented field or walked amidst "confused noise and smoke, and garments rolled in blood." There are foemen more deadly than those who stand foot to foot and eye to eye watching for the unguarded spot, to plunge in the flashing steel; for of all contests none are more to be dreaded than those, where the man is matched against what he loves with one half of his nature, though he condemns it with the other. Self-conflict is the most terrible, and victory or defeat there is of more true moment to the warrior than the issues of a battle to the king who rules an army; "For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?" We purpose sketching the life of one of the Lord's veterans, who had oft waxed valiant in fight, and proved himself at last more than a conqueror, though he had to tell of not a few campaigns where laurels were lost rather than won, and had to bear to his grave the smart of many a wound, long healed over and forgotten by his friends, while the scars upon his memory seemed to bleed even to his dying day. In the small market town of Diss, John Vine Hall was born, of parents then in reduced circumstances, in the year 1774. Possessed of natural and physical powers of no niean order, fully developed by a training in the rough but successful school of self-relying toil, he was evidently a man well adapted to occupy an important niche in the social fabric, and worthy of the affection and esteem of his more immediate circle of friends. At eleven years of age he was apprenticed to a schoolmaster, having contrived before that time to tumble into a river through a hole in the ice, to get pitched off a horse at full gallop, and to dispense with the use of either ladder or stairs in his descent out of a loft, followed up by falling from a tree on to some spiked palings. As may be supposed * From his Life, by Rev. Newman Hall, |