The one thing that marked his character as a Christian was _love_. He seemed to get nearer to Jesus than any of the other disciples. And it is always the case, that the nearer we get to Jesus and the more we learn to know him, the more we shall love him. John’s love to Christ seemed to take entire possession of him. It filled his whole soul. And so we think of him as the _apostle of love_. He is spoken of particularly as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” It was he who sat nearest to his Lord and leaned on his bosom at the last Passover. Peter was great for his readiness in serving Christ; Paul was great for the learning and the labor with which he served his Master; but John was great in the love for that Master, which ran through all he did. And this great love made him useful both _in his life_ and _in his writings_. It made him useful in his life. There is nothing that will lead to such earnest and devoted labor as this principle of love. We know but little of the life of this loving apostle after the ascension of Christ. We have no report of his missionary journeys, as we have in the case of the apostles Peter and Paul. But we know he was so earnest in the cause of his Master that he was sent a prisoner to the island of Patmos to stop his labor, but in vain. He was willing to be an exile, a prisoner, and, as some say, a laborer in the mines, but he was not willing to give up working for his Master. Tradition tells us that he had to take his choice between stopping his work for Jesus and being thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil. He could not cease from his work. He was thrown into the boiling oil; but came out uninjured and kept on with that work which his love constrained him to do. He lived the longest of all the apostles, and was the only one of them who died a natural death. And in the closing days of his life, when too feeble to do anything else, we are told that he used to be carried into the church at Ephesus, where his latest labors had been performed, and, standing up in the midst of the congregation, would stretch forth his trembling hands and say, “Little children, love one another.” What a beautiful close to the life of this loving apostle! Truly his love made him _useful in his life_.