"'One must be himself infinite in knowledge to define it, infinite in
comprehension to fathom it, infinite in love to appreciate it. Love is
God in man, for "God is love," and "every one that loveth is born of
God;" but love is not merely veneration, nor respect, nor justice, nor
passion, nor jealousy, nor sympathy, nor pity, nor self-gratification;
to love something as our own is but a form of self-love; to love
something in order to win it for ourselves is just a perpetration of the
same mistake.' Dr. Karl Gerok wrote,--'Love is the fundamental law of
the world. First, as written in heaven, for God is love; second, as
written on the cross, for Christ is love; third, as written in our
hearts, for Christianity is love,' And Drummond tells us that 'Love--is
the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new commandment for keeping all
the old commandments, Christ's one secret of the Christian life.' And
another writer says,--'You are a personality only as your heart lives,
and the heart lives only as it loves. Love is all action, therefore the
amount of your active love measures the size of your personal heart.'"
"Love has been defined as 'the desire to bless.' That is like divine
love, for there can be no self thought in God. God's love is over all
and above all, but when our love responds to his, his love becomes to us
a personal experience. Love can reach down when in loving trust we reach
up. Love is like the seed. It manifests no life until it begins to grow.
Like the seed it must rise out of the dark ground into the light of
heaven,--out of self thought into God. God's love to us is like the
sunlight. We can make it our own only by being in it, if we try to shut
up the sunlight, we shut it out. We forget to do wrong when loving God.
As we love God, the love we feel for him goes out to others."
Evadne sighed. "You make it seem a wonderful thing to be a Christian,"
she said.
"To be a Christian, little one, Andrew Murray tells us, 'just means to
have Christ's love.' Real love means giving always, of our best."
[Illustration: THE SILENT FIGURE WITH THE AWFUL ENTREATY IN ITS STARING
EYES]
God so loved that he gave his Son, the essence of himself. Jesus gave
his life, not only in the final agony of the crucifixion, but all
through the beautiful years of ministry in Nazareth and Galilee. There
is a truer giving than of our temporal goods. Our friends, if they
really love us, want most of all what we can give them of ourselves. It
is those who give themselves to the world's need who come nearest to the
divine pattern Christ has set for us to copy, and, if we truly love him,
we shall want not his gifts but himself.
"People seek after holy living instead of perfect loving, they do not
realize that we can be truly holy only as we love, for 'love is the
great reality of the spiritual world.'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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