The original here quoted by our Lord is to be found in the words of God to Moses, (_Leviticus_ xix. 18:) _"Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord"_ Our Lord never thought of being original. The older the saying the better, if it utters the truth he wants to utter. In him it becomes fact: The _Word_ was made _flesh_. And so, in the wondrous meeting of extremes, the words he spoke were no more words, but spirit and life. The same words are twice quoted by St Paul, and once by St James, always in a similar mode: Love they represent as the fulfilling of the law. Is the converse true then? Is the fulfilling of the law love? The apostle Paul says: "Love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." Does it follow that _working no ill_ is love? Love will fulfil the law: will the law fulfil love? No, verily. If a man keeps the law, I know he is a lover of his neighbour. But he is not a lover because he keeps the law: he keeps the law because he is a lover. No heart will be content with the law for love. The law cannot fulfil love. "But, at least, the law will be able to fulfil itself, though it reaches not to love." I do not believe it. I am certain that it is impossible to keep the law towards one's neighbour except one loves him. The law itself is infinite, reaching to such delicacies of action, that the man who tries most will be the man most aware of defeat. We are not made for law, but for love. Love is law, because it is infinitely more than law. It is of an altogether higher region than law--is, in fact, the creator of law. Had it not been for love, not one of the _shall-nots_ of the law would have been uttered. True, once uttered, they shew themselves in the form of justice, yea, even in the inferior and worldly forms of prudence and self-preservation; but it was love that spoke them first. Were there no love in us, what sense of justice could we have? Would not each be filled with the sense of his own wants, and be for ever tearing to himself? I do not say it is _conscious_ love that breeds justice, but I do say that without love in our nature justice would never be born. For I do not call that justice which consists only in a sense of _our own_ rights. True, there are poor and withered forms of love which are immeasurably below justice now; but even now they are of speechless worth, for they will grow into that which will supersede, because it will necessitate, justice.