challenge, and summons the sleeper to awake
and arise.

If you do not love, you are under the thrall of the devil, into whose
dark nature love never comes. "Herein the children of God are manifest
and the children of the devil. Cain was of the wicked one, and slew
his brother."

"As I have loved you." Life is one long education to know the love of
God. "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us," is the
reflection of an old man reviewing the past. Each stage of life, each
phase of experience, is intended to give us a deeper insight into the
love wherewith we are loved; and as each discovery breaks upon our glad
vision, we are bidden to exemplify it to others. Does Jesus forgive to
the seventy-seventh time? We must forgive in the same measure. Does
Jesus forget as well as forgive? We, too, must forgive after the same
fashion. Does Jesus seek after the erring, and endeavor to induce the
temper of mind that will crave forgiveness? We also must seek the man
who has transgressed against us, endeavoring to lead him to a better
mind. The Christian knows no law or limit but that imposed by these
significant words, spoken on the eve of Christ's sacrifice, "As I have
loved you."

Thus all life gives opportunities for the practice of this celestial
temper and disposition. It has been said that talent develops in
solitude, whilst character is made in the strain of life. Be it so.
Then the character of loving may be made stronger by every association
we have with our fellows. Each contact with men, women, and children,
may give us an opportunity of loving with a little more of the
strength, purity, and sweetness of the love of Christ. The busiest
life can find time for the cultivation of this spirit. That which is
spent in a crowd will even have greater opportunities than the one
which is limited to solitude. The distractions and engagements that
threaten to break our lives up to a number of inconsiderable fragments
may thus conduce to a higher unity than could be gained by following
one occupation, or concentrating ourselves on one object.

Let us gird up the loins of our minds, and resolve to seek a baptism of
love from the Holy Ghost, that we may be perfected in love; that we may
love God first, and all else in Him, ascending from our failures to a
more complete conformity to the love wherewith He has loved us;
embracing the sinful and erring in the compass of our compassion, as we
embrace the