THE CHARACTER OF LOVE
‘Thou shalt love.’
I stop short at these few words, because I want to speak about the general principle of love, and not about any special application of it to God or to man.
I. Love must be practical—Love, though it is an emotion, is set before us in the Bible in the most practical aspect. We are not bidden to gauge the warmth of our emotion, but we are to test our love by its fruits.
II. Love must be spiritual.—Love to God must in some ways differ in its very nature from love to man. Perhaps it really belongs to a higher part of his nature. If we take the Scriptural division of man’s nature into body, soul, and spirit, may it not be that while human love belongs to the soul, the seat of the emotions, love to God belongs rather to the spirit, that part which is made to hold blessed communion with the Divine? Love to God may belong perhaps to a purer, higher, less earthly sphere of our being.
III. How love may be fostered:—
(a) There must be the putting away, the strenuous, self-denying putting away of all that can stand in the way of love to God.
(b) There must be the cleansing of the soul by Divine grace, and in the power of a true penitence there must be the cleansing of the soul from every taint of impurity.
(c) There must be meditation upon His love, and yet more by meditation upon His love as manifested in the incarnation and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
—Bishop Walsham How.
Illustration
‘I have known a mother sorely troubled in mind because she could love her child, her little babe, so passionately, and yet could not feel the same sort of love to God. My comfort to that mother was this: God did not give you that mother’s love for Himself, but for your child. He does not ask you to love Him with a mother’s love. He asks you for something higher, something less emotional no doubt, something withdrawn more from earth and earthly sensations, and therefore do not be so grieved because you cannot love God in the same way in which you love your child. I believe you do love God, and I believe that if God called you to do so, you would give that very child to Him at His will.’