THE HALLOWING OF LOVE.

"A new commandment I give unto you. That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." — John xiii. 34.

"And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us." — Eph. v. 2.

The transcendent endowment of the soul is its capacity of loving. In the passionate, clinging fondness so abundantly manifest between man and woman, parent and child, friend and friend, immeasurable depths and possibilities of affection are revealed. Love, indeed, is that trace of the divine which shines out with such lustre at times as to redeem the sordidness of human nature, and cast a softer tinge even over its stains. And love lends the touch of romance which preserves the lives of multitudes from utter dreariness and inanity. Its beauty and its pathos, its joys and sorrows, struggles and triumphs, belong to the common experience of the race, and serve to intensify the thrill of existence.

And this heightened interest which love gives to life is reflected in the literature of the world all down the ages. In poetry and in song it is the enchantment of this theme that inspires the sweetest strains and wields the strongest spell; and many a moving story is full of the wonderful things endured, dared, and accomplished under the pressure of love’s ardent flame.

To purify love at the core, and infuse into it a higher temper, was the object on which the Lord Jesus concentrated the main current of His teaching and the labour of His life. The love which burned in Himself was pure and warm and deep, an outbreathing of the Eternal Love that throbs in the Divine Father’s heart; and His anxiety was to draw men and women within its range, that they might catch its glow, and get their own love imbued with a spirit that would bring it into unison with His. "Love one another as I have loved you" was the "new commandment" He sought to enforce, and that commandment was echoed in the apostolic injunction, "Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us."

"As I have loved you"; "as Christ also hath loved us." There the standard is set for the exercise of our affections.

How, then, did Jesus love? What was there that was specially characteristic in the love He displayed?

For one thing, it was a love pervaded by the profoundest reverence.

It is impossible not to be struck with the sensitive respect which Jesus showed to every human being. Never would He trifle with the conscience or the feelings of anyone with whom He came in contact He recognised in every soul — the soul of man or woman — the stamp of the Divine image, and felt constrained to honour it; and that gave to His love an elevation that was beautifully chastened and pure.

Moreover, it was a love actuated by a great yearning — the yearning to impart the fullest measure of good and the highest enrichment of life.

Some imagine they love when they simply desire to be loved — when they pine to enjoy all the warm regard and tenderness, and all the kindly service, which another heart can render; and that, no doubt, is a perfectly natural feeling. Nevertheless, in its own essence, the desire to be loved is not love. Jesus desired to be loved; His heart reached out for confidence, friendship, sympathy. But the supreme passion which moved Him was a longing to give rather than to receive, "not to be ministered unto, but to minister" (Matt. xx. 28). And what He longed to give was of His best, and for the best interests of those for whom He cared. His love was an irrepressible yearning to lavish the wealth of His own soul on other souls, to pour out on other souls the treasures of blessedness which He Himself enjoyed in the fellowship and service of the Father, and thereby to make them also rich in true and satisfying good.

Here, in this reverential, high-purposed love of the Lord Jesus, we find the ideal of what all human love should be. And when the affection we bear for others becomes charged with a similar delicacy of respect for their inviolable spiritual rights, and with a similar loftiness of aim for the ennobling and enriching of their lives, then it takes on a sanctity it did not possess before. It is tuned to a diviner key. That is the Hallowing of Love — loving as Jesus loved. And the effect of it is potent and sure. It transforms the power of loving into a gracious, exalting force which tells beneficently on life in many marvellous ways, and these are indicated by the following considerations.

1. The Appreciative Insight of Love.

Nothing sees so deeply or so truly into the secrets of another’s character as love, and nothing is so quick to perceive the promise of excellence that may be latent there. "Love is blind," says the old proverb; and blind indeed, in some sense, it may be to surface blemishes and frailties: but that is only because its gaze is fixed so intently on the capabilities of good which its penetrating vision has discovered beneath. Experience proves that love has a piercing intuition to which many things otherwise invisible are disclosed. Every one knows that only by a heart of affection in a fellow-man can his own heart be read justly. No person who judges with suspicion, jealousy, or frigid indifference can rightly understand another. As Maeterlinck puts it: "He who sees without loving is only straining his eyes in the darkness." In fact, the more fervent the regard we cherish for those bound up with us in life, the more astonishing becomes our keenness of glance in discerning the better qualities that lie hidden behind their failings.

But that keenness of glance for the better qualities is vastly quickened if the affection that beats in the heart is hallowed by sympathy with the mind and heart of Christ For then there is begotten an eagerness to search for the better qualities, and to recognise them and frankly give credit for them wherever they are perceived. As to how love thus worked in Jesus we have notable illustrations in His appreciative treatment of Peter (John i. 42), of Zaccheus (Luke xix. 5-9), and of the Penitent Woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke vii. 37-48).

Recognition, appreciation — that is precisely what thousands are craving for amid the weakness and failure of which they are painfully conscious. Who can reckon the blessing that is brought to human souls when they feel that some other human soul really believes in the good that is in them yet, and is willing to respect them for it, willing also to make allowance for their infirmities? That kindles fresh hope in many a heavy-laden breast. It wakens the earnest resolve to act more faithfully on the higher promptings that still stir within. It inspires to a renewal of effort in living the true life and treading the upward way. Precious beyond conception is the helpful ministry of encouragement that springs from the appreciative insight of a pure and Christlike love.

2. The Inventive Genius of Love.

The ingenuity of love is proverbial; and in face of difficulties encountered in meeting the requirements of those whose good it seeks, love displays a fertility of resource which is often amazing. It can devise means of doing a kindly service, or in forestalling a coming necessity, on which mere calculating prudence could never have hit.

"Ah, how skilful grows the hand

That obeyeth love’s command!

It is the heart, and not the brain.

That to the highest doth attain;

And he who followeth love’s behest

Far exceedeth all the rest."

But let love be tuned into unison with the pure spirit of Jesus, and its ingenuity sets to work in a peculiarly lofty direction. What it plans to do then is to raise the standard of thought and action within the range of its influence. It brings its tact to bear on the elevation of purpose and feeling in other minds. This we see in the case of the Master Himself. What unfailing resourcefulness He exhibited in meeting the deeper spiritual needs of the men and women with whom He had to deal! We can scarcely imagine anything wiser, or more dexterously suited to the occasion and the persons concerned, than His method of procedure with Nicodemus (John iii. 1-13), the Woman of Samaria (John iv. 1-20), the Paralytic at Capernaum (Mark ii. 1-11), Mary of Bethany (John xii. 1-8), and even with Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate — though with regard to these last His gracious intention was foiled. The inventiveness of His love can never be surpassed.

And for the sanctified ingenuity of our own love there is ample scope afforded in the realm of home-life, in the confidential intimacies of friendship, and in every close and tender bond that unites heart to heart. There, the higher the quality of the affection entertained, the more surely will it result in a mutual endeavour to help each other to nobler ideals, to foster in each other generous sympathies, to lift each other up to worthy aims. Such an endeavour has its perplexities and its exacting demands, yet the tactful skill of a high and hallowed love may be counted upon to solve the problems that arise; and it may accomplish marvels of ingenuity in carrying out the sacred purpose it has in view.

3. The Sacrificial Impulse of Love.

Herein lies the beauty, as well as the power, of love — in its ready disposition to bear toil, pain, and heavy risk that others may be gladdened and helped. What touching tales the secret records of humanity could tell of the privations and sufferings endured, without murmuring or grudging, when affection was the motive that fired the heart! It is such manifestations of self-devotion that shed a ray of brightness over this dark world, and illumine the outlook for the ultimate uplifting of the race.

Never was the sacrifice of personal interest and ease carried to a degree more sublime than by Jesus, our Lord. His was a self-renunciation which confronted scorn, shame, hardship, death itself, in working for the spiritual regeneration of men, and all because of the love for them which glowed in His breast. And all love that draws its inspiration from His will show a kindred willingness to renounce every narrow consideration of self, and risk every sharp severity, in the effort to further the higher well-being of any soul it can reach. And if ever the presence of a divine element in our maimed human nature is revealed, — if ever there are felt, shining

            "through all this fleshly dress

Bright shoots of everlastingness," —

it is when the self-devotion of a Christlike love gleams in the eyes, and lights up the face, and impels to deeds of generous service and sacrifice for the sake of lifting another to a richer good and a purer joy.

4. The Victorious Efficacy of Love.

There is a subtle, overmastering attraction in love which is not easy to resist. The soured, sullen heart leaps up to greet you, and surrenders to you its confidence and trust, when it becomes aware of your affectionate appreciation of the germs of worth it still has within. You draw out the best in another by the sympathetic recognition of his best which your warm good-will prompts you to accord.

And when love goes to the extent of self-sacrifice, it wields a conquering power which nothing else can match. Few can hold out persistently against the steady devotion of a generous soul that undertakes hardships freely in planning and working for their good. That willing endurance of labour and pain is the one proof of love which even hatred cannot altogether withstand. Opposition, anger, jealousy, bitterness melt away before the gracious influence of a sincere and self-denying love. Indeed, the victories thus gained by love are an endless surprise.

Love is never wasted. Though its efforts may seem for a time to go for nought, yet the good it strives to accomplish is sure to be reached in some measure in the end. How disappointing all the lavish self-devotion of Jesus appeared when those whom He sought to bless rejected Him and hounded Him to the cross! And yet the winning spell of that very self-devotion worked on more mightily than ever after He had passed beyond the sphere of mortal sight. It was the charm of His pure and self-renouncing no love that overcame hostility and unbelief, and it is overcoming still. That cross on which He died has been making its silent appeal to generation after generation as the years roll by. It is the appeal of suffering, redeeming love; the appeal of a love that sacrificed, that gave up all in self-forgetting passion for the good of all, that saved others though itself it could not save. And before that appeal, obstinacy, self-will and pride, reckless vanity and hardened viciousness, have been constrained to give way and own themselves conquered by its divinely captivating power.

And no love that has in it the spirit that pervaded Christ’s can ever toil or suffer in vain. Its effects — though for long, perhaps, unseen — are real, and they may be striking deeper than can be conceived. They may continue to grow and accumulate, and produce an ever-enlarging amount of good after the earthly life has come to a close. For

"Lore lives on, and hath a power to bless

When they that loved are hidden in their graves."

5. The Imperishable Vitality of Love.

A true and pure affection, fired by high and sacred aims, is a deathless thing. It possesses a freshness that is immortal. The proverbs of the world have seized and enshrined this truth. "Mother’s love is ever in its spring"; "Many waters cannot quench love"; "True love never grows old"; "Love is strong as death." In point of fact, the moment one soul meets another in the mutual surrender of love, there rises in them the consciousness of something eternal. And in proportion as their love is a hallowed feeling, sanctified, as Christ's was, by reverence and by regard for life’s spiritual ends, it forms a bond of adamantine firmness, which only grows the stronger through the changing years, as the burden of toil and care has to be borne together, and the wrestle with trouble waged. And if we wish to have the relish of life heightened, and the heart kept young up to life’s last hour and in the unseen beyond, our sincere anxiety should be to cultivate the power of loving as Jesus loved. Then a benign, sweetening influence would pass into all our closest human relationships, making them finer and truer; and we should grasp the secret of finding blessedness in spreading blessing, which, as Browning reminds us, is ever a rich and sufficing reward.

"For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,

And hope and fear —

Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love,

How love might be, hath been indeed, and is;

And that we hold henceforth to the uttermost

Such prize, despite the envy of the world."