Ille flevit, ne tu homo diu fleres. Ille injurias passus est, ne tu injuriam tuam doleres."--Ambrosius (de fide ad Gratianum, l. ii. c. 4). "God is not against us men. For if God had been against us and hostile to us, he would not assuredly have taken the poor wretched human nature on himself." "How highly our Lord God has honoured us, that he has caused his own Son to become man! How could he have made himself nearer to us?"--Luther (Th. xvi. pp. 533, 574). "It is to be remarked that he (Stephen) is said to have seen not God himself but the man Christ, whose nature is the dearest and likest and most consoling to man, for a man would rather see a man than an angel or any other creature, especially in trouble."--Id. (Th. xiii. p. 170). "It is not thy kingly rule which draws hearts to thee, O wonderful heart!--but thy having become a man in the fulness of time, and thy walk upon the earth, full of weariness." "Though thou guidest the sceptre of the starry realm, thou art still our brother; flesh and blood never disowns itself." "The most powerful charm that melts my heart is that my Lord died on the cross for me." "That it is which moves me; I love thee for thy love, that thou, the creator, the supreme prince, becamest the Lamb of God for me." "Thanks be to thee, dear Lamb of God, with thousands of sinners' tears; thou didst die for me on the cross and didst seek me with yearning." "Thy blood it is which has made me give myself up to thee, else I had never thought of thee through my whole life." "If thou hadst not laid hold upon me, I should never have gone to seek thee." "O how sweetly the soul feeds on the passion of Jesus! Shame and joy are stirred, O thou son of God and of man, when in spirit we see thee so willingly go to death on the cross for us, and each thinks: for me." "The Father takes us under his care, the Son washes us with his blood, the Holy Spirit is always labouring that he may guide and teach us." "Ah! King, great at all times, but never greater than in the blood-stained robe of the martyr." "My friend is to me and I to him as the Cherubim over the mercy-seat: we look at each other continually. He seeks repose in my heart, and I ever hasten towards his: he wishes to be in my soul, and I in the wound in his side." These quotations are taken from the Moravian hymn-book (Gesangbuch der Evangelischen Brüdergemeine. Gnadau, 1824). We see clearly enough from the examples above given, that the deepest mystery of the Christian religion resolves itself into the mystery of human self-love, but that religious self-love is distinguished from natural in this, that it changes the active into the passive. It is true that the more profound, mystical religious sentiment abhors such naked, undisguised egoism as is exhibited in the Herrnhut hymns; it does not in God expressly have reference to itself; it rather forgets, denies itself, demands an unselfish, disinterested love of God, contemplates God in relation to God, not to itself.