HOW WE MAY FULFIL OUR BOASTS.

251 the use of these titles and of these boasts implies, if He did not wish us to have the dream turned into a reality. We may have more charity, a deeper charity than we have aspired to, when our aspirations have been the grandest. For we may abandon the thought of having a charity or love of our own, and so may be perfected in love. We may yield ourselves to that love which passes knowledge, that love which is a consuming fire to destroy the grovelling, petty desires, the party spirit, the self-seeking that have made us a world of sects instead of a church of brothers. And so while some are fancying that they shall banish persecution from the world by banishing all thoughts of God from it, we shall find that it is only by giving glory to Him in the highest we can have peace on earth or good will among men.

LECTURE XVI.

FAITH AND LOVE-THEIR RELATION TO EACH OTHER AND TO THE WORLD.

1 JOHN V. 1—5,

Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth Him that begat loveth Him also that is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments: and His commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?

THE Apostle has been treating of Love. He passes in the first of the verses I have just read, to Faith. Formal writers on Theology or on Ethics would have stopped to announce the commencement of a new subject. They would probably have told us that they had been discussing one of the great Christian virtues or graces; now the time was come for explaining the nature and signs of another. If we find no such intimations in St. John, we must not hastily conclude that he is indifferent to method. Perhaps he is more careful of it than those writers to whom I have alluded. Perhaps he knows better than they what is the method of the human spirit, what is God's method of awakening and directing the different energies with which He has endowed it.

At all events, experience has proved that very serious

THE TWO GRACES.

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practical inconveniences, and very interminable controversies, are the results of those artificial divisions which have been thought a valuable improvement upon the teaching of Scripture. Simple men, who have had to work and live, possibly just about to die, have been driven nearly mad by discussions upon kinds, qualities, and conditions of faith, upon the relative value of acts of faith and acts of love, upon the possibility of faith existing without love or love without faith. And those who raise these hungry questions are never able to settle them. They are debated backwards and forwards with a subtlety and refinement that does not the least hinder fierce and violent passions from coming forth on each side. For the combatants know that their discourses are touching what is most vital in themselves and in their fellow-men. They know that the bystanders, who smile and ask them why they are making so much ado about nothing, are wrong, and may one day feel how much is at stake in what now seems a mere fight of words; they are half conscious that they have conveyed this false impression to men's minds by their disputations; they are vexed and fretted by the contradiction; it makes them still more eager to confute their adversaries; it turns their zeal into gall and bitterness. A dreadful story, which those who engage in religious debates understand only too well, and which makes them sometimes tremble as they read the sentence,' Woe to the world, because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe be to him by whom the offence cometh. For it were better for him that a millstone were tied about his neck, and that he were cast into the depths of the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.'

Without judging those who enter into these disputes in one interest or another—for if we judge, we shall certainly be judged and only desiring as much as possible to keep ourselves out of them, let us try if we cannot find how St. John escaped the peril into which they have fallen; why he can speak of Faith and Love without setting them up as rivals; how he ascertains the claim of Love to the precedence which his brother Apostle St. Paul had assigned it in his Epistle to the Corinthians, while he gives to Faith all the dignity and rights which that same brother Apostle had claimed for it in his Epistle to the Romans.

'Every one who believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God, and every one who loveth Him that begat loveth Him also that is begotten of "Him.'

We are familiar with this language. before how the idea of a Divine birth, of

We have seen Sonship to God,

penetrates the whole mind of St. John. We have found how the acknowledgment of Christ as the anointed one, as endowed with the true Spirit, as manifesting the true life of God,-is connected with this divine birth, how His Sonship is made the ground of our sonship. Is there anything fresh to be learnt from this passage, then? Is it not a mere repetition of what we have been told more than once already? No! its position in reference to the statements in the last chapter invests it with a new meaning and importance.

We have heard the broad announcement, 'God is Love.' A man might say, 'That is enough for me. I am content. There is nothing to fear. The words are without exception, without limitation. They are inspired words. They 'are Apostle's words.' Even so. But what are these?

And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.' You liked the first words. Do you like these as well? Have you kept this commandment? Are you able to keep it? Because, if we may trust the Apostle who delivered the one sentence, this is indissolubly bound up with it. He seems to intimate that those tidings will be of no profit to us if these are forgotten. Thus we are driven to inquire, whether there is no link between the God, the absolute Perfect Being, whose name is Love, and ourselves,-the feeble, the imperfect, yea, more than that, the unloving. Or if we begin at the other end, we are forced to inquire, how it is possible to keep that command, which, as I said before, is the most difficult of all to keep.

I believe that Jesus is the Christ. That is to say, I believe that there is a living bond between me, the poor, helpless human creature, and the absolute perfect Being. I believe that His Love has come near to me in a human person, whom I may claim as the brother of me and my race. I believe that Person is the Son of God; that in Him dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily. I believe, therefore, that I am related to that Love which created the world, and all that is in it. I may claim affiance in it. Again, I believe that Jesus is the Christ. I believe that He is anointed with the Spirit of God to the end that He may bestow that Spirit upon men. I believe that the Spirit in Him was a uniting Spirit, a self-sacrificing Spirit, a Spirit of active, suffering, sympathising Love. I believe that that Spirit is acting upon us, and can work in us the love which is most foreign to our selfishness.

Here is faith; faith in its simplest form; faith in