loves man, man loves God. God is attracted to man, man draws nigh to God. Each loses itself in the other. This state of soul is blessed beyond words. Those who have become fully subject to it can hardly be conscious of it, for it is deeper than consciousness. It is heaven itself, where meditation upon personal blessedness is left far behind and below, and the realization of the eternal life takes its place.

We are a long way, here and now, from this perfect accord; for in us, that is in our flesh, there dwelleth no good thing. Even in the regenerate there is still the centrifugal passion, which is ever aiming at severance from the highest love, and which would rush into the ghastly darkness of a perfect independence of the Divine love.

Only once has the Word become flesh,' and humanity been utterly interpenetrated with the Divine light, and the issue of this sublime conjunction was that even the flesh of Christ put on immortality, was received up into glory, and is set down on the right hand of the eternal Majesty. Still it is possible for 'holy love' to make continuous advance to the fulness of communion with God. We have received of His fulness, and grace over against grace,' in every augmenting pulse of holy affection, in the sacred interchanges of 'holy love."

This becomes manifest when we consider the several relations which love sustains to 'KNOWLEDGE,' 'FAITH,' 'HOPE,' and 'OBEDIENCE.' There are several wide and suggestive utterances of Holy Scripture which appear contradictory until we have discovered this fundamental law of holy love. The most obvious contradiction in form is between certain statements of our Lord. Thus He says, on the one hand, 'If ye love Me, keep My commandments.' In this exhortation, love to Christ is the mighty energy that produces holy obedience. The loving eye is quick to discern the will, the wish of the beloved. The heart which truly loves cannot break one of the least of these commandments. Even if the commandment seem arbitrary, it is enough that He who is supremely loved has said, 'This do in remembrance of Me.' That is enough. Such motive is sufficient. It is simple, clear, and explicit. The obedience which is the witness, the pledge, the consequence of love, and is neither formal nor perfunctory, but the outcome of a self-sacrificing affection, is alone well pleasing. This idea pervades the language alike of Prophets and Apostles. Isaiah and St. Paul combine to repudiate an obedience which springs from any lower motive. Here we find a link which unites the Old Testament with the New. Two great principles emerge as we contemplate it. One is: (1) We must not dignify by the name of LOVE that which is unwilling or unable to yield obedience to the beloved,

or which is not strong enough to overcome all our carnal reluctance to do that which God commands. (2) We dare not build anything upon an OBEDIENCE which is not the child and the consequence of a genuine love. But is this all? Certainly not. Our Lord says elsewhere, 'He that hath My commandments and keepeth them, He it is that loveth Me: and He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him;' and again, If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love.' At first sight it would seem that obedience' is regarded in these words as the parent of love, not only the pledge, but the occasion of mutual love, and of all the Divine interchanges of sacred affection; in other words, that obedience and love had changed places! It might seem in this exhortation that an authoritative command was jarring with that gracious selfabandonment to which love calls. But is not the solution of the apparent discord found in the following underlying thought? There is verily a love which prompts to obedience, but this obedience again is the stimulus and food, the provocative and the ground of a still higher love, leading on to a sublimer response of mutual affection. We begin by loving little; but if the little love is strong to express itself by keeping the commandments of love, the love grows by what expresses it, and the higher love leads to a more complete obedience, and so on for ever. The burning seraph loves, because he goes and returns (on the Divine behests), as it were a flash of lightning.' Obedience is the libration of the wings of love. Love flames into seraphic fire when fed with the oil of obedience.

The powers of love reveal themselves in like manner in their relation to knowledge. Take the great text, 'This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only veritable God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.' The KNOWLEDGE is life eternal. Not to know God is to abide in death and darkness. We read elsewhere that the life itself is the light of men. They that know Thy name will put their trust in Thee,' and Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee.' All this is re-echoed from every part of Divine Revelation. There is a knowledge, a full assurance, a divine intuition of the living God, which is life eternal. The beatific vision is but the perfection of the knowledge of God. It is the complete satisfaction of our whole spiritual nature. We who pant and yearn after reality, after eternal truth, can only find it in the knowledge of God.

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Yet there are many things said of knowledge, per se, which baffle us. Elsewhere we read that 'knowledge puffeth up'-that we may have the gifts of knowledge, may understand all mysteries, may speak with the tongues of men and angels, may

prophesy with fine intuition of the truth, and yet be mere clanging cymbals, or sounding brass. Certainly, without some knowledge, without mental realization of truth, we can put truth to no use. Knowledge, acquaintance with the idea of God, must, by the nature of the case, precede credence and love. Knowledge is a necessary preliminary to faith and its attendant virtues. How can we believe that which is not made known to us? At times, moreover, knowledge in its deepest sense and most life-giving essence is shown to be dependent on putting into practice, on doing that which we know to be right, by not only hearing,' but 'doing' the sayings of Christ. At other times we are told that obedience, a willingness to do the will of God, will open the eyes of the understanding to appreciate, to know the doctrine, whether it be of God. At other times knowledge' is boldly contrasted with love. 'Knowledge puffeth up,' Love buildeth up;' while knowledge without love is nothing worth. So that knowledge is sometimes represented as an essential preliminary to both faith and obedience; and again, at other times, knowledge is represented as verily dependent upon and conditionated by a heartfelt obedience.

What we have already seen to be the value and place of holy obedience may help us to resolve this seeming contradiction; but we have more certain and satisfying light upon this mystery in the profound utterance of St. John: He that loveth not, knoweth not God. This is true of other objects, both of love and knowledge, as certainly as it is true of the love and knowledge of the Lord God. We do not know any thing, any person, any science, until we love it. The dry light' needed for scientific pursuit is the eye unbleared by prejudice, unfilled with tears of foolish and inappropriate emotion, not an eye which does not flash with love. It is sometimes said that Love is blind.' Cupid has been imaged with shaded eyes. No greater mistake can be made. Love has microscopic eyes to see both the faults and excellences of the beloved object. What a world this would be if mothers could see in all children the divine attractions and worth which they do see in their firstborn; and if lovers could see in all persons the wonderful lovableness they easily discern in one another! It is only the LOVER of truths, of persons, of countries, of great causes and principles, who really and veritably knows them. He that loveth not his country, does not know it. He that loveth not Nature, does not know it. He that is not ready to sacrifice his own pleasure to secure the triumph of a great principle, does not know that principle. (I do not mean that he shows himself to be ignorant of it, seeing that if he knew it better, he would love it more; but that the love, the going out of self towards an object, is

itself revelatory of the object.) A fortiori, He that loveth not God, knoweth not God.' Love is actually the condition of the highest knowledge. If this be a law of knowledge, then we see at once how easy it is to explain the relations of knowledge and life, and of knowledge and obedience, which puzzled us just now. There is a kind of knowledge which is a necessary antecedent to any faith, to any obedience, to any love, and such knowledge may remain barren and useless for the higher life. We may, as many do, know, and fall short of believing; know, and not obey; know, and refuse to love. Such knowledge may puff up its possessor and vaunt itself. It leads nowhither, it is neither life nor peace; but there is a knowledge born of simple obedience and holy love, and this knowledge is 'life eternal.' So we gather from this meditation another of the powers of 'holy love. It transforms the incipient knowledge, the verbal assent to propositions, into the invincible assent of full assurance. The knowledge of the only true God and Jesus Christ, which is born of holy love quickened and stimulated by the microscopic eye of strong, reverent affection, is nothing short of the beatific vision; it is, as our Lord said, life eternal.

In close relation, and by similarity of argument, we see that other powers of holy love give great intensity to faith and hope. There are degrees of faith, varying from simple credence, admission of the truth of certain facts, without passion or any corresponding conduct, on to a certainty which tends to high and appropriate emotions, and to the full assurance which appeals to and absorbs the whole nature. Faith varies from the admission of a moderate probability to the vision and revelation of the Lord. The degrees of faith differ as a solitary grain of mustard-seed does from the vast forest-tree triumphant at every point with the wealth and glory of its developed life. What is the energy by which faith passes from stage to stage? Faith is energetic through Love. Divinely implanted love, spiritually inspired self-surrender increases every faculty of knowledge, deepens. every impression made by truth, opens the eye which indifference or passion had blinded, purifies the gaze which prejudice or evil bias had corrupted and obscured, and so makes the trembling faith which can only cry, 'I believe, help my unbelief,' grow, burn, gleam with holy enthusiasm, until it cries, 'I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded.'

There is faith which leads to love and is manifested in love, and there is the higher faith which is born of a perfected love. This again in its turn blazes into the flame of holy confidence. He who feels it cries, I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any

other creature shall be able to separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord.'

In like manner there are degrees of 'hope.' Who has not experienced what he and others call Christian hope, but which on close analysis is found to be little better than a faint and feeble desire after better things, and a desponding cry of the soul for what is just a grade better than blank despair? This is not the hope that saves. Contrast it with the full evidence of things hoped for, which is imparted by living faith; let desire be large, and expectation strong; let hope embrace all Divine promises, and it becomes a vast capacity for blessedness, and often bursts out in solitary places and on dark nights into songs of rejoicing. Then is revealed what the Apostles call 'patience,' quiet waiting, with a smile upon the face, for all the lustre of the Divine manifestation. Tribulation and sorrow are but the crucible in which this precious quality and energy of soul is refined. This hope maketh not ashamed,' and can never be disappointed, because it is a veritable prelibation of its own object-it is the earnest and foretaste of the purchased possession. We ask once more, what leads the soul from hope to hope, from the faint uplifting of the wearied weeping eye to the 'hope full of immortality'? St. Paul gives us the answer: 'Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us.'

In this answer, moreover, he throws a flood of light upon what he meant by 'THE LOVE OF GOD,' and reminds us that he identified it, here and elsewhere, with the whole of that supernatural and new life which is produced in the spirit of man by the Holy Spirit of God. Regeneration,' 'a new creature,' consecration,'' sanctification,' 'resurrection and ascension with Christ' are terms which in part adumbrate the full effect of the baptism with the Holy Ghost, or the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God in the life of man. Consequently, what in one place St. Paul calls the 'fruits of the Spirit,' elsewhere he verbally enumerates as the powers of Holy Love. The Holy Spirit by His grace brings the soul into genuine, veritable relations of love to God, and into the spiritual consciousness of the love of God. Thus it is that incipient knowledge, quickened by love, mounts into the knowledge born of love, which is life eternal; that faith which trembles on the verge of extinction becomes a faith active through love to remove mountains; that hope becomes the anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast; that obedience becomes an absolute submission, and a beatific vision.

H. R. REYNOLDS.

THE seed dies into a new life, and so does man.-George Macdonald.