ious to avoid repetitions. Such a mode of representation will surely gratify him who is convinced of the highest truth and infinite importance of these doctrines; to the other class, they may, indeed, on account of their uniformity, be rather wearisome than affecting. And is not this. after all, everywhere the case with the divine doctrine? He who will be amused and entertained by a graceful change of subjects, seeks not the gratifications of this desire in the divine word and its preaching; it is the earth which, in its unspeakably rich variety, offers him that which he desires. What is revealed to us of God and his will and working, and of the future world, however inexhaustible in its depth, is still, in comparison with that variety, very simple, and confined to a few themes The lofty beauty of a clear starry night, too, consists not in the fascinat ing change of objects, and yet its impression upon the soul is the might iest and most majestic.

As these remarks were suggested by a glance at the text, they should at the same time serve as an introduction, to justify the simple and plain reflections which we will now offer upon it. For so great and lofty is the divine simplicity in the discourse of the apostle, that we must only be fearful of injuring and dissipating its impression, when we seek to adorn its interpretation with rhetorical art. Let us only unfold the holy import of our text and candidly lay it to heart. That great theme of the apostle, love-that love is the substance of the Christian life-this is the kernel of our text; so let it be also the middle point of our meditation. We will try to persuade ourselves that LOVE IS THE BEGINNING, THE PROGRESS, AND THE CONSUMMATION OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.

I. If an old pious proverb bids every work, even in earthly affairs, to Legin with God, surely and most of all must the beginning of our Christian life proceed from God. Our relation to God must, before all, be right, that then, from this strong root, our Christian life may grow.

But when is our relation to God right? When we glanced about us upon the beautifully adorned earth, and looked into the immeasurable depths of the starry world, a thousand voices made known to us the almightiness and omniscience of God, for whose sake all things have their being and subsist in wonderful order. When we observed the divine control in the history of the human race, and then turned back the reflective glance into our own inmost soul, there met us the awful holiness and justice of God, as they adore what is good, and cherish it with approbation, but abhor what is evil and destroy its work. Agitated with mysterious awe, our soul bowed before the inconceivable greatness of its Creator, before the holy loftiness of its lawgiver. The thought of God had become in us a luring one; but from God himself an immeasurable chasm still parted us. The Eternal dwells in a light that no man can approach; no one has beheld him: his nature was hidden from us. The Christian life had not yet begun in us.

Then we heard how the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the

Father, came down to men and was made known to them; that these hidden depths of the nature of God are naught else but love. We now heard the apostle speak out the great word, the solution of the deepest riddle of existence-GOD IS LOVE.

Man can experience, my friends, nothing greater in his life than when he gains this blessed knowledge. God is love. In order that he might communicate to creatures himself and his blessed life, he has called the world into existence; then he has so loved the world, the world sunk in sin, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that all who be lieve in him, might not perish but have everlasting life. Such a knowl edge, when with living power it penetrates the soul, when the soul is able truly to appropriate it to itself, is necessarily the turning-point to a new life; for we see ourselves now in an entirely new relation to God. The unknown God is now known to us, for him who has no name, have we found a name, the sweetest name of Father. If before, fear and awe kept us remote from the lofty, the inaccessible One, we can now draw near to him with a childlike confidence and say, "Abba, beloved Father." "See," exclaims John, "what love the Father has shown to us, that we should be called the children of God." In the possession of this holy privilege, a still peace spreads itself over our soul, as it once sank upon the soul of Elias, when the Lord, after the storm, and flame, and earthquake, drew near to him in the still soft breeze. It is in this privilege that we recognize our highest dignity. It allures us with holy pride to announce to the world that God loves us. If before, the thought of God only evoked in us the consciousness of our own nothingness, now it exalts us to the boldest assurance; for we are conscious that God loves us. Now let no one say more, that man can render nothing to God. Is God the subject of this love, he certainly can render him one thing-love; for it lies in the innermost nature of love that it desires love in return.

And this is the second element that belongs to the beginning of the Christian life. The rays of its dawning light beamed forth brightly when we learned that GOD IS LOVE; but the sun of the new day rose, when we said with John, "Let us love him, for he has first loved us"———when the resolve in our soul was strong. Henceforth we will no more live for ourselves, but for him who has loved us, and out of love sent his Son for our reconciliation. To please him, this is our holiest endeavor; his will is the law of our action and omission. My friends, to partiai improvement, to the abandonment of single crimes, to the attainment of single good qualities even he may come, whose soul as yet knows noth ing of childlike love to God. Placing ourselves upon the stand-point upon which the virtues appear as isolated, we shall in general, seldom find a man who can not show one or another virtue; but a true regeneration and thorough renewing of the whole feeling and life, is only possible when the soul, penetrated by that love which springs from faith,

consecrates and offers himself and his whole being, as a possession, to God. Our life is only truly Christian when its root has become the thankful, reciprocal love to our Father in heaven, who had, who has planned the redemption for our everlasting salvation.

II. If the knowledge of the love of God in Christ and the reciprocal love enkindled by it is the beginning of the Christian life, the inner seed, out of which it unfolds itself, we may also recognize its progressive development in the active love to our neighbor.

Let no one, however, suppose by this, that now, in the further development of the Christian life, love to God is to cease to be active, or to lose its dominion in the heart. Not so; but as the root lives on, although the plant has grown up out of it, and as the fountain does not cease to stream, though it has formed the brook, so too the beginning of the Christian life continues in its further progress. Yea, as plant and brook must at once cease to be if the root is dried and the fountain sealed, so Christian brotherly love ever continues to receive its life from the love to God.

The latter necessarily reveals itself in the former, and the former is the sure preserver of the latter. "Every one," says John, "that loveth him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him." The Father's image that he bears in himself, fills him with a deep joy and affection when he beholds it in his brethren. Now he pursues, as the highest good of his endeavor and labor, no more his own fame, his own enjoy. ment, his own advantage, but the common good of his brethren, the goodly thought of their spiritual and physical life; to foster this, in the wider or narrower sphere in which God had placed him, he recognizes, as his holiest calling, to which he willingly subordinates his own private interests. His activity, however painstaking, however insignificant it may appear to be, now seems to him to be sanctified, because he knows that by it he serves his brethren.

Where you miss the presence of this feeling-where you find a sluggish reluctance to be active for the good of others—when you meet the unsubdued passions of hatred, of envy, of revenge, which are eager to injure a neighbor, or when you come in contact with the cold self-seeking, which sees a brother starving and shuts his heart from him, which unshrinkingly sacrifices the neighbor's welfare, so soon as his own advantage requires it-name all the pretended piety of such an one plain hypocrisy, and all his protestations of love to God mere prattlesounding brass-tinkling cymbal. For the apostle also says in our text: "If any say, 'I love God,' and hateth his neighbor, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen."

But against this proof of the apostle, doubts and scruples have arisen in the breasts of many thinking readers. "Shall it then be harder," they have asked themselves, "to love the invisible God than the vis

ible man ?" But is the man not deformed by sin, and often in so high a degree, that his whole nature makes a most repulsive and loathsome impression upon us? How shall affection and love not feel themselves checked? For the very reason that we see him before us; because the might of sin confronts us unmistakably, in the distorted features of his countenance, in his repulsive manners and words, in his whole disgustful appearance, it will be hard for us to love him. And then, on the other side, does not our own experience teach us, that our affection for those whom we love, is wont to grow, when we do not see them for a time? When we saw them daily, associated with them daily, our mutual peculiarities and weaknesses often came into disagreeable collision with one nother; we thought ourselves injured by them, now in this way, now in that. Sometimes, indeed, love and affection for them were for the moment supplanted by the emotions of provoked self-love, or by the lively feeling of displeasure. Were we, however, for a time separated from them, all these disagreements were forgotten, and a hearty longing for their society gained the mastery over us. And was this longing, so far as this earthly life is concerned, a vain one—were the dear ones torn from us by death-then their image, in our loving remembrance, purified itself from every stain; and so transfigured, we kept it in the still sanctuary of undying affection. How then can we believe that the love to visible men is easier than love to the unseen God?

How, my friends, shall we deny the truth of these remarks? We can not. Or shall we give up the attempt to justify the words of the apostle? Just as little. First think of it. This experience, that by a remarkable principle of our nature, the remote is forbearing, that it only hides the dark stains, but not the beaming features, stands not at all in contradiction with what John says in our text. For this beautiful image of the absent loved ones, which our soul keeps, is still nothing but the effect of our personal intercourse with them; the impression which, purified from some single imperfections, they have left upon us. But in relation to their disturbances of love, springing from sin, let us reflect, that the apostle does not speak of love to rough, vicious men, which, to be sure, has its special difficulties to overcome; but of the Christian brotherly love of the love to the children of God, to the true disciples of Jesus Christ, in whom he himself has gained a likeness-in whom, by this means, the original human nature, the crown of the earthly creation, the image of God, comes forth purer and clearer in its nobility and in its loveliness.

Yet, how distant still remains the ever-marred image of the inconceivable perfection and glory of the Original! How infinitely more worthy of love is God than the most excellent of his creatures! To whom could it occur to deny this? Surely to the apostle, least of all. But John by no means makes the universal assertion, that it is harder to love God than men, but will only point us to a particular advantage from the love

to the brethren, when he says: "For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen ?”

But John does not content himself with this ground, but, in order to impress upon the Christian most deeply, how essential the brotherly love is to the Christian life, he reminds them of the express command of God, that whoever loves him should also love his brother. "Thou shalt love God, thy Lord, with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, with every power, and thy neighbor as thyself." So had God commanded; and the Son of God had declared that the second part of this command is like the first. Both are most closely connected with one another. Whoever would fulfill the one part of the royal law, can not set aside the other. Whoever is earnest in his love to God, seeks to please him, and directs himself according to his will. But it is his will and command that we should love our brethren, and not the brethren alone, but also our enemies—those men even, who are blinded by selfishness and hatred; who are sunk in sin and delusion-and not with words, nor with the tongue, but with the act and with the truth. And surely, my friends, when love to God has once broken through the iron bands of selfishness, and has made the heart familiar with the holy art of denying itself, and of forgetting itself, in loving self-surrender, then will the beautiful flowers of sympathetic joy and sorrow, as of themselves unfold, and bring forth the refreshing fruits of an active philanthropy.

So is then love to our neighbor that, in which the sincere love to God presents itself-in which the Christian life, in its wider progress, moves, as in its own element.

III. But when it is perfected, it does not come out away from love, as if it had found its goal in something else; but the perfection of the Christian life is nothing else but the perfection of love.

“Fear is not in love," says John; "but perfect love casteth out fear." When the apostle now adds, as a reason, "For fear has pain,” his opin ion can not be other than that love and pain are contradictory in their nature; that with love, joy and blessedness are intimately and inseparably linked; that love is the very essence of blessedness. Then love, when it is perfected, must necessarily appear as blessedness; and without perfect love, on the other hand, no blessedness is conceivable. And this is sc true, that God himself, were he without love, could not be happy. But who could so much as think of this contradiction? God is blessed from eternity, as certainly as he is love from eternity. For from eternity the Son is with the Father, participant of his nature-united with the Father in the closest, most blessed communion of love; as the Son himself, on the night before his death, solemnly declared, speaking to the Father: "Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”

Now as God is blessed in his infinite love, so we, my friends, can only be blessed where our love is perfect. The deepest source of all discontent and of all trouble in our earthly life, is selfishness. This is a never