ONE LOVE EXPELS ANOTHER.
By A. J. Gordon
THE amusements that minister only to the senses, giving no nurture to the moral or intellectual life, are to the Christian but the dead leaves of that old life with which he professes to have done. Beat them off by violence, by harsh denunciations, by vehement denunciations, we can not. But, O Christian! if there be one here that has gone back to these rudiments of the world, would that the spring-time of a new love and of a quickened conscience might come to you; then how quickly these pleasures would drop from you! Therefore, I pray you, get more divine love in your souls; come into fuller and warmer communion with Christ. It will be hard to enforce the negative, "Love not the world," except through the action of the positive and powerful impulse of personal affection to Christ. "One love expels another," wrote St. Jerome. Hence, God has given us the most powerful incitement of which we can conceive, for kindling and nourishing a divine affection in our hearts. In Christ crucified, we see love conquering love—the love of God, which gives his only begotten for the world—conquering the love of the sinner, and making him willing to give up the world for that only begotten Son of God. Hence, the cross has taken a holy revenge on the world. The world crucified Christ; but Paul, looking up to that cross, exclaims: "By which the world is crucified unto me." So it is, that inveterate appetites for sin, and unconquerable affections for pleasure, are found to disappear, as by magic, when we become absorbed and possessed by the love of Christ. "Where is my old passion for gay amusements—my old-time love for sinful indulgences?" asks one who is all taken up in adoring and praising the Lord who hath redeemed him. "What held me like a fetter, seems to have vanished like a snowflake, in the warmth of this new life." So have I heard many say, as they have told the experience of their new life. But their old evil love will come back to them, unless the soul be kept full of the heavenly affection. —Rev. A. J. Gordon, D. D.