Consider the law of love as a natural force of humanity. It will help us to understand this principle if we first distinguish it from some other principles of our nature.
I. It is to be distinguished from the principle of will, and in some regards is indeed to be opposed to it. The human life and the law of human life must give us personality in man, but also a being of God. The law must give us distinction, without the isolation in which human life is impossible. And the law must give us union, for which all human life is a craving, without the confusion from which it shrinks. All human lives that are following the law of will, of self, of individualism, are breaking life's true law, and missing life's true aim.
II. The law of love is to be distinguished from the principle of knowledge. Knowledge is not a primary fact, and can never become an ultimate law of life. "Knowledge shall vanish away, but love never faileth."
III. The law of love is wholly opposed to the spirit of fear. Fear is not natural to man. Fear only came to man when tempted by knowledge. He transgressed the obedience of love, and having transgressed he hid himself from the presence of God. And Adam represents us all. We hide from God because we have sinned. When we kneel at the foot of the Cross, and feel that because God loves us we must love God, we learn again the law of life, the law of being: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy mind, and all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself." That is the law of God an unbroken actual principle. It is the law of your being. Are you living it? You cannot rest without it. You cannot, because it is the law of your being; God has made you to love Him, to have communion with Him. And in that perfect communion the law of God is not broken, and that law is, that with all your heart, with all your being, with all the powers that you have, shall you love God. Then reason shall be linked to heaven, and affection linked to heaven, and conscience linked to heaven, and idea, and imagination, and all the powers of mind and soul linked to heaven by the eternal principle of love.
Archdeacon Watkins, Cambridge Review,Nov. 26th, 1884.
References: Matthew 22:36; Matthew 22:37. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2,450. Matthew 22:36-38, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxviii., p. 232.Matthew 22:36-40. Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 220; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxi., p. 116; see also Sermons,4th series, p. 205.