“The Motor Power in Love’s Activities”
By George B. Starr
The Great Fountain from Which It Flows—Not a Tinge of Hatred to Contaminate LOVE works. It must work. It is the greatest working force in the world or the universe. And it must work for others; for love works outward, and lives on its deeds that actually minister to others’ happiness. Love plants, it sows, it reaps, it builds, it ministers to the sick, it carries light and blessing near and far, it creates in order to bless. Love must create new channels for its ever increasing activities. Wider, broader, higher, further must it reach. “Back of the loaf is the snowy flour;
And back of the flour is the mill;
And back of the mill is the wheat and the shower
And the sun and the Father’s will.”
ONLY BLESSING AND HAPPINESS
God is love; and love is as great and good and far-reaching as God Himself. It must be. Love can plan only blessings and happiness, peace and joy. Love can not plan evil. Even in the destruction of sin and sinners and death itself, love is working to bless. “By love serve one another.” Gal. 5:13. Love must serve. It lives and grows by service; and it is constantly seeking avenues, channels, through which it may serve more. Men and angels have been and are the natural channels for love’s working. But love’s workings have back of them all, as Lawrence says, “a mighty Motor, which is Christ Himself as author, operator, and energizer of all divine activities. Christ is the one motive power. Not the command of Christ, not the love of Christ, not the glory of God alone, not the guilt or perils or possibilities of souls—no one of these alone is the great controlling force, but Christ Himself.” THE WHOLE LIFE CHANGED BY THE TOUCH
Men meet Christ; and as the wire is charged with the current of the mighty dynamo with which it comes in contact, and becomes itself a channel for the electric current, so one touches Christ, and another touches him, and is in turn charged with the same energy. The Samaritan woman at the well touched Christ, and all Samaria was electrified through her. Mary touched Christ, and seven devils were paralyzed, and she was released, to set all earth and heaven an example of giving the best to Jesus; for love must give its very best. Paul touches Christ, and the world is stirred yet with his earnest prayers that we may “know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.” All his hatred and selfish ambition are turned to love for Christ and man. CHARGED BY THE DIVINE DYNAMO
Moody touched Christ in Boston in 1856, at the age of nineteen, and his life was charged with an indefinable love for all the world. Work he must, and work he did, from 1860 to 1890, as few other evangelists ever worked for the salvation of two continents. The divine Dynamo was undoubtedly charging him for love’s service to the world, which resulted in one of the greatest evangelists the world’s history has recorded. Christ, through Moody, reached and stirred to activity thousands of others who felt the influence of love’s power through him, and were cut loose, as if by magic, from their moorings to sin, and set at their Master’s work. Among those so moved were Ira D. Sankey, Major Whittle, P. P. Bliss, Robert E. Speer, and John R. Mott, of America; Henry Drummond and James Stalker, of Scotland; Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell, of England, now of Labrador; and Dr. Kenneth MacKenzie, of China; and among the thousands of others is included the writer. Dr. W. T. Grenfell, in an article in the Congregationalist of November 12, 1914, says of the influence of Mr. Moody upon his life and work: “I have been analyzing the causes that brought me to this barren coast and held me here these twenty-two years, a large section of one’s life. The answer is an odd one: An American, a man of humblest birth, a man invested with no human authority, a man I only once spoke to,—D. L. Moody. His whole soul was for the individual; and his sane simplicity and courageous big heart, with his practicability, made every one want to do things. Like Paul, he claimed for Christ the credit for anything he accomplished. That lovely unselfishness appeals always to the best in every man. D. L. Moody always stood on the platform of ‘whose I am, and whom I serve.’” Now as surely as Christ touched and mightily moved men in the past, so is He electrifying and moving men to-day, for the finishing of His work, for the harvesting of the work of all His servants of the past; and you and I may be among those so honored of Heaven as to be channels through which His love may still flow earthward. All may keep in close and constant touch with Him through His word and prayer. There is a wireless service with Heaven’s Dynamo, and we may use it. “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth” includes the power of all the love in the universe, which is the greatest impelling and staying power in the universe; and we may be the channels of its working. “Make channels for the streams of love,
Where they may broadly run;
And love has overflowing streams
To fill them every one.
“For we must share if we would keep
That good gift from above.
Ceasing to share, we cease to have.
Such is the law of love.”