he patience, gentleness,
thoughtfulness, love, and yearning of Christ. We are taught to say,
"Christ liveth in me." If this be true, Christ would love others
through us, and our touch must be to others as the very touch of Christ
himself. Every Christian ought to be, in his human measure, a new
incarnation of the Christ, so that people shall say: "He interprets
Christ to me. He comforts me in my sorrow as Christ himself would do
if he were to come and sit down beside me. He is hopeful and patient
as Christ would be if he were to return and take me as his disciple."

But before we can be in the place of Christ to sorrowing, suffering,
and struggling ones, we must have the mind in us that was in him. When
St. Paul said, "The love of Christ constraineth me," he meant that he
had the very love of Christ in him--the love that loved even the most
unlovely, that helped even the most unworthy, that was gentle and
affectionate even to the most loathsome. We are never ready to do good
in the world, in the truest sense or in any large measure, until we
have become thus filled with the very spirit of Christ. We may help
people in a certain way without loving them. We may render them
services of a certain kind, benefiting them externally or temporally.
We may put material gifts into their hands, build them houses, purchase
clothing for them, carry them bread, or improve their circumstances and
condition. We may thus do many things for them without having in our
heart any love for them, anything better than common philanthropy. But
the highest and most real help we can give them only through loving
them.

"When I have attempted," says Emerson, "to give myself to others by
services, it proved an intellectual trick--no more. They eat your
services like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel
you and delight in you all the time." When we love others we can help
them in all deep and true ways. We can put blessings into their hearts
instead of merely into their hands. We can enter into their very
being, becoming new breath of life to them,--quickening, inspiration,
impulse.

"What is the best a friend can be
To any soul, to you or me?
Not only shelter, comfort, rest--
Inmost refreshment unexpressed;
Not only a beloved guide
To thread life's labyrinth at our side,
Or with love's torch lead on before;
Though these be much, there yet is more.

"The best friend is an atmosphere
Warm