the context,
not for the sake of saying pretty things, but for the sake of putting
sharp points on Christian duty, emphasises another thought, that Godlike
love will be a forgiving love. Why should we be always waiting for the
other man to determine our relations to him, and consider that if he
does not like us we are absolved from the duty of loving him? Why should
we leave him to settle the terms upon which we are to stand? God has
love, as the Sermon on the Mount puts it, 'to the unthankful and the
evil,' and we shall not be imitating His example unless we carry the
same temper into all our relationships with our fellows.

People sit complacently and hear all that I am now trying to enforce,
and think it is the right thing for me to say, but do you think it is
the right thing for you to do? When a man obviously does not like you,
or perhaps tries to harm you, what then? How do you meet him? 'He maketh
His sun to shine, and sendeth His rain, on the unthankful and the evil.'
'Be ye imitators of God, as beloved children.'

Now note the all-sufficient motive for this great precept.

The sense of being loved will make loving, and nothing else will. The
only power that will eradicate, or break without eradicating, our
natural tendency to make ourselves our centres, is the recognition that
there, at the heart, and on the central throne of the universe, and the
divinest thing in it, there sits perfect and self-sacrificing Love,
whose beams warm even us. The only flame that kindles love in a man's
heart, whether it be to God or to man, is the recognition that he
himself stands in the full sunshine of that blaze from above, and that
God has loved him. Our hearts are like reverberating furnaces, and when
the fire of the consciousness of the divine love is lit in them, then
from sides and roof the genial heat is reflected back again to intensify
the central flame. Love begets love, and according to Paul, and
according to John, and according to the Master of both of them, if a man
loves God, then that glowing beam will glow whether it is turned to
earth or turned to heaven.

The Bible does not cut love into two, and keep love to God in one
division of the heart and love to man in another, but regards them as
one and the same; the same sentiment, the same temper, the same attitude
of heart and mind, only that in the one case the love soars, and in the
other it lives along the level. The two are indissolubly tied together.

I