what God loves
in us. We also know that no man can wisely love himself until he knows
the purifying power of a love that is divine.

If now I may assume that this exposition of the text shows the ground,
and defines the sphere of a right love of self, I may further say that
the Royal Law does not require us to love in others what it does not
permit us to love in ourselves. And we do well to be clear about this.
Many of us stumble over this text because, not getting at its true
inwardness, we have an uneasy feeling that it carries us too far.
Others try to work up an artificial sentiment, and profess to exercise
a charity which is not theirs to extend.

Here is a man, let us say, who calls himself a religious man, who yet
notoriously is a mean and shabby creature. I once heard this man, well
placed and prosperous, boast of having that day become richer by some
twelve hundred pounds through an oversight of a solicitor in winding up
the affairs of a late client. I afterwards learned that the mistake
was at the expense of a widow and her young children, who, because of
it, were brought within very measurable distance of want. Must my love
for my neighbour include one callous enough, not only to do a thing
like that, but to boast about it? Must it annex the whole low plane of
such a squalid disposition? God forbid. What I hope I should hate in
myself I am not asked to love in another. If a man is base and
unworthy we are to recognize the fact, however ugly; we are to look the
devil in him in the face, and say it is the devil.

But, on the other side, Christianity admonishes us that our judgments
of our neighbours are neither infallible nor final. It has been well
pointed out, that if we "have found any part of the secret of God's
mercy shown to us, we shall not find it hard to believe in God's mercy
for our neighbours." To realize that the essential thing the Redeemer
saw in us and deemed it worth dying for, He sees in them, will help us,
however weary at times in their service, not to weary of it.

In this command, then, we have the ground and motive for the sacrifice
of each for the good of all. We see that it is possible to love our
neighbour in the sense we are to love ourselves. We see that the
command which, on the surface of it, seems to urge an unattainable
experience, is, in truth, what St. James calls it, the Royal Law that
binds us together not only as neighbours, but as children of the same
All-F