THE SWEETNESS OF LOVE.

Some years ago a prominent and efficient minister of New York was conducting a revival work among the poorer classes of that city. He had as a co-laborer in that work, a Christian woman of extraordinary spiritual power and skill in saving souls. One day he ventured to ask her what was the secret of her experience and power; without any hesitation she answered, "It is the sweetness of love." Though for many years he had known the higher ranges of faith in its charismatic and sanctifying power, yet this expression and thought of a human life crystallized around the "sweetness of love," brought a new revelation to his mind. I believe that every life is moulded and colored by some one central thought, or passion, running through it. All worldly and wicked lives are not moulded in the same pattern; and all religious lives are not fashioned on the same order. Every true child of God has all the graces of the Spirit, but those graces are not united in the same pro portion in each case.

The central current running through some Christian lives is courage, a bold vindication of truth; in others, it is prudence, a careful and daily forethought; these will seem opposite to each other; in others, it is faith; in some hope, or expectation, and many other types might be cited. In the case I have referred to, the entire life had been moulded on the pattern of love. This variety in the central force of religious life will apply to primary or advanced believers. When believers are cleansed from inbred sin, and filled with the abiding Comforter, the leading characteristics of the individual are not destroyed, but purified and wondrously intensified. In order to reach a life which may be filled with the sweetness of love, there must be

1. The introduction of the Divine love into the heart.

"Love is of God." There are two words in the New Testament which are translated love: Philos is love in its human, natural form, embracing and pervading all the relations of human life. Agape is love in its Divine and spiritual nature, and is used only in moral or religious senses. This love (Agape) does not originate in man or nature; is not produced by development or culture; it is truly supernatural and Divine. It is only introduced into our own spirits by a moral miracle.

On the condition of our repentance and faith, Jesus, as the chief magistrate of humanity, by virtue of His own death, forgives us our sins, blots out all our guilt, and sends the Holy Ghost to convert, to change our moral natures, giving us a new birth in our spirits; shedding abroad the Divine love in our hearts. The strange feeling of inward tumult, alarm, and distress of mind is unaccountably removed, and in their stead are experienced the most delicious emotions of peace, tenderness and good-will to all men. There is not only an intellectual perception, but a strangely sweet feeling, a heart consciousness that God is "our Father." This is only the beginning of a real religious life.

2. The next step in order to reach a life characterized by the sweetness of love is, the soul in which love has been planted, must seek and find the "perfection of that love." The term "perfect love," as used by St. John, does not mean that God's love is perfect; every one will con cede that God's love is not only morally, but absolutely and always perfect; but the term means that the love (Agape) in our hearts is made perfect. Ever after we have experienced this love of God, we all find things in our hearts that are antagonisms to love. Love may control the heart, and yet not have the glorious monopoly of the entire heart. We may love God, and yet find remains of unholy temper and de sires; such as loving the pre-eminence, love for human praise and honor, desires for laying up money, roots of murmuring, restlessness of heart, remains of fleshly lusts, and a hundred things that the child of God may hate, and yet they are in him, and bemuddy the stream of religious love at this fountain of the soul.

And though love has the majority in his heart, still it will cry to its Father, and pant and thirst, to carry the unanimous and solid vote of the soul for Jesus, and holiness, at every petty or general election of the will. Love is a bound less monopolist, and can not settle itself down into a home-like rest, and fixed tranquillity, until every impure and molesting temper is purged away. The perfection of love does not consist in its age or volume, but in being freed from the collisions and antagonisms of inbred sin; hence, entire purity of heart is the only condition for the perfection of love. Love is perfect, when like a crystal stream of water, there is no muddy in fusion of inbred sin to disorder its transparent face.

Whatever may be your training in religion, or your views of holiness, you will never reach your anticipations of a Christian's life; you will never reach that liberty, and deep peace, and victory of soul you long for, till your faith touches the cleansing power, and you cross the Rubicon of heart-purity. All the higher ranges of love, and faith, and power, and courage, lie above the line of entire sanctification. So that without passing into a state of Christian purity, we need never expect to know much of the depth and power of holy love.

Instead of placing this work of deliverance from hereditary sin toward the end of life, the Scriptures everywhere insist that it should occur early in our religious life, and Paul told the Thessalonians that God was willing to sanctify them wholly, though they had been formed into a church only about six months. AU the luxuriant growths of deep piety, lie beyond the zone of the utter crucifixion of self.

3. In reaching a life of universal love, we must deliberately, and with a holy passion, choose and cherish the spirit of love as the all- engrossing channel and aim of attainment.

In the empire of grace, there is always room for us to choose between the excellent, and the more excellent, and the most excellent. A thousand men may be converted, and no two of them have the same idea of what a converted life ought to be; a hundred believers may be entirely sanctified, and no two of them have the same mould or type of holiness after which they follow; true, they all have Jesus for a pattern, but no two have the same views of Jesus.

Even after the Jews had crossed the Jordan, into the promised Canaan, there. was ample variety of possessions in mountain, vale, forest, pasture, sea-shore and sunny slopes, all of which may typify the manifold phases of holy life developed beyond heart cleansing. God is de lighted to have us forever exercising our free- wills in choosing the better and best; so there is no point in grace, or even glory, where God has not in love provided ample space where we can be forever choosing between the excellent and more excellent, between the lovely and surpassing lovely, between the glorious and the superlatively glorious. There are many Christians who will never choose beyond the positive degree; there are some who press after things better, and there are a few who will never rest, and will pay any price to reach the superlatively best. These are the crown jewels of time and of heaven. "One star differeth from another star in glory."

A life filled and overflowing with the universal sweetness of love! Is this the superlative best? That is for you to decide. If you do not see it to be the superlative, you will not choose it. Have you fallen in love with the overflowing idea of universal love? Are your dreams, thoughts, prayers and studies all centered on being lost in love?

Do you so pant and thirst to have your whole being dipped in the dew of love, or to change the figure, entirely consumed in the ecstatic fire of love, that you would gladly yield up all other talents, and graces, and crowns, and rewards, in order to reach such a consummation?

What is the sweetness of love? It is love made perfect, and filling, enlarging and over flowing the breast; love pushing its tidal wave up into the intellect and will, deluging all the mental faculties with its delicious currents; love filling the tongue, selecting the fittest words, sweetening the voice, or else holding it in precious silence; love that obeys God in every thing, and yet selects the very humblest and sweetest way of doing it; love that conceals all its pains in the bosom of Jesus, and gives its sunshine to others; love that can toil hard all day without appreciation or reward, except to sleep at the Savior's feet at night; love that may have those who are above it in office or wealth, or learning to treat it with injustice, neglect, or sarcasm, and say nothing about it, but receive it lovingly as strokes from its Father's hand; love that can sow seed amid pains, persecutions and tears, and willingly have another to reap all the harvest and praise; love that follows wicked souls to the gates of hell, and seeks to alleviate and reduce their suffering, even though it can not save them from woe; love that studiously seeks to conceal itself and exhibit Jesus; that exhausts every art in its reach to populate heaven, to purify and brighten earth, and to diminish the sorrows of hell, and asking no pay except a larger increase of love.

Is this a hard saying to our hearts? Do these tests seem severe? Remember that so long as we persist in keeping to the middle of this stream of love, we can never touch the hard shores and sharp points of severity. Pure, inimitable, lowly love stimulates its own toils, cures its own pains, and is its own reward; and is the most saintly choice of the will.