nihilation, which is
self-transfiguration, and, I was going to say, deification, like that
of loving Christ with all my heart because He has loved me so.

Again, let me remind you that, on its lower reaches and levels, we
find that all true affection has in it a strange power of
assimilating its objects to one another. Just as a man and woman who
have lived together for half a century in wedded life come to have
the same notions, the same prejudices, the same tastes, and sometimes
you can see their very faces being moulded into likeness, so, if I
love Jesus Christ, I shall by degrees grow liker and liker to Him,
and be 'changed into the same image, from glory to glory.'

Again, the love constrains, and not only constrains but impels,
because it becomes a joy to divine and to do the will of the beloved
Christ. 'My yoke is easy.' Is it? It is very hard to be a Christian.
His requirements are a great deal sterner than others. His yoke is
easy, not because it is a lighter yoke, but because it is padded with
love. And that makes all service a sacrament, and the surrender of my
own will, which is the essence of obedience, a joy.

So, dear friends, we come here in sight of the unique and blessed
characteristic of all Christian morality, and of all its practical
exhortations, and the Gospel stands alone as the mightiest moulding
power in the world, just because its word is 'love, and do as thou
wilt.' For in the measure of thy love will thy will coincide with the
will of Christ. There is nothing else that has anything like that
power. We do not want to be told what is right. We know it a great
deal better than we practise it. A revelation from heaven that simply
told me my duty would be surplusage. 'If there had been a law that
could have given life, righteousness had been by the law.' We want a
life, not a law, and the love of Christ brings the life to us.

And so, dear friends, that life, restrained and impelled by the love
to which it is being assimilated, is a life of liberty and a life of
blessedness. In the measure in which the love of Christ constrains
any man, it makes for him difficulties easy, the impossible possible,
the crooked things straight, and the rough places plain. The duty
becomes a delight, and self ceases to disturb. If the love of God is
shed abroad in a heart, and in the measure in which it is, that heart
will be at rest, and a great peace will brood over it. Then the will
bows in glad submission, an