LOVE is not an emotion. It is not an impulse. Love is a principle, steadfast, enduring, undying. It is born of the Spirit of God. Rom. 5:5. That which calls it forth is others’ needs. It serves souls, not because they are worthy, but to make them worthy; not because they are rich, but because they are poor, and love would make them rich; not because they can or will repay again, but only that they may be helped, to in turn be helpers of the needy.
LOVE includes benevolence, beneficence, charity, kindness, mercy, duty, and gratitude; and love is of God; for “God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him.” “We love, because He first loved us.” And he who has the love of God within will love as Christ loved, and do as Christ did.
LOVE grows by what it gives, not by what it withholds.
“There is that scattereth, and increaseth yet more;
And there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth only to want.
The liberal soul shall be made fat,
And he that watereth shall be watered also himself.”
But love does not scatter that it may increase; it is not liberal that it may receive; all that may accrue from its exercise is left to God. Love gives and delights in giving.
“Love spends all, but still hath store.”
LOVE is served in serving. It is happy in bringing others happiness. When men of all parties and creeds applied to Mr. Howe, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, for protection, he never refused his assistance to a worthy person, whatever his creed. “Mr. Howe,” said Cromwell, “you have asked favors for everybody except yourself; pray, when does your turn come?” Howe replied, “My lord Protector, my turn is always when I can serve another.”
The joy of John the Baptist was to fulfil the mission of proclaiming the coming of his Lord, even when he knew that that coming would completely eclipse his own mission. His joy was fulfilled—filled full—in the decrease of himself because it resulted in the increase of Christ. John 3:29, 30.
LOVE does not give for its own sake. It is not love which denies one’s self a meal for health’s sake, or to strengthen self-culture. It is love to give up that meal that one who is needy may eat and be strong. It is not love that bears pain and toil and suffering for the sake of bearing it, but it is love that bears it for others’ sakes. In a solitary place in Russia stands a monument with this inscription: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.” The pillar marks a spot where a man died. A small party pursued by wolves had exhausted seemingly the last resource, and only another victim to the hungry, savage maws of the wild beasts could save the party. A servant, against the entreaties of his master, threw himself into the midst of the ravenous brutes, and so saved his master’s life. In gratitude the master erected the monument. But Infinite Love died to save us—His enemies. Does not His love for us lead us to give ourselves for those in the same peril as were we when He took our trembling hand and saved us from eternal death?
LOVE must give; love lives only by giving.
TRUE love is not satisfied in merely wanting to see all saved. There are few among professed4Christians that do not want all to be saved, and they pray eloquently for the heathen. Jesus saved men by saving each one. He did good to all by doing good to each. Do we love God? Do we want souls saved? Do we want one soul saved—any definite one so much so as to give our very life? That person has no burden of soul, no real love for the Master who does not have a burden of some one soul, his enemy, perhaps, because that soul needs saving. That is the spirit of the Master. “Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He maketh His sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust; . . . ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
WHILE love seeks justice and practises severe economy, it is not economical in its giving. “He that giveth, let him do it liberally.” Love is not discouraged if its gifts are unused, perverted, squandered, misappropriated. They are given in good faith to God, and God will care for results. Often our gifts are like bread cast upon the waters, utterly lost to sight, perhaps never again seen by us in this earth-life. Sometimes it seems to us a right, wise use is not made of the means given; but never for this must our giving cease. We are to do good for good’s sake. It is said of Christ: “He shall not fail nor be discouraged till He set judgment in the earth.” Through all the millenniums, centuries, years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds, He has poured out His undying, unstinted, self-denying love. How many times the precious seed has fallen by the wayside, by the stony places, among the thorns which choked; so many times love has been bestowed on unworthy, ungrateful wretches. How many times have we responded? Yet He has not been discouraged. Shall we ever be when He is not, and His almighty love and power are in control?
O, IT is love that is needed. Not maudlin sympathy or ecstatic feeling or fevered impulse, but love for souls, love begotten of Jesus Christ, in a heart cut loose from the world and emptied of sin; it is a living Christ within that is needed, a deep, abiding, eternal principle, seeking not our own ease or pleasure or gain, but others’ good.
LOVE is more than duty, more than gratitude. Divine duty tells what we ought to do. Gratitude seeks to know what we can do for Him who withheld not His life. And love compels the doing. It was love, and love only, that sent Judson to Burma, that gave courage to Brainerd, that placed the learning of Paul and of Morrison upon the altar of God, that quickened the mechanical skill of Williams, and the burning zeal of Duff, and constrained Kothah-by-u to spend whole nights in prayer for the salvation of his people, the Karens.
LOVE kindles the missionary spirit at home, opens closed hearts, unlocks earthly treasure-houses, makes liberal even the naturally covetous, stingy, and penurious. O, it is love that we need, Christ-begotten, Spirit-born love to open the arms of faith to embrace the great, needy races of earth, to tell the glad tidings to those in the prison-house of sin, to press “to its pitying bosom the orphan tribes of heathendom who, among their idols many, have no father God and no brother Saviour.” Are we honest before God sufficient to do our duty? Are we so truly grateful that we will render to Him and His devoted service for all His benefits to us? Does the love of Christ constrain us? Love is the law of His kingdom; are we children of His kingdom?
