in any real depth, we shall answer by the gush of our love
to Him.

And so here is a test for men's faith. You call yourselves Christians.
If I were to come to you and ask you, 'Do you believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ?' most of you would say, 'Yes!' Try your faith, my friend, by
this test: Does it make you love Him at all? If it does not, it is more
words than anything else; and it needs a wonderful deepening before it
can have any real power in your hearts. There is no faith worthy the
name unless its child, all but as old as itself, be the answer of the
heart to Him, pouring itself out in thankful gratitude.

No love without faith; 'we love Him because He first loved us.' God must
begin, we can only come second. Man's natural selfishness is only
overcome by the clearest demonstration of the love of God to him; and
until that love, in its superbest because its lowliest form, the form of
the sacrifice on the Cross, has penetrated into a man's heart through
his faith, there will be no love.

So then, dear friends, there is a test for your love. We hear a great
deal said nowadays, as there has always been a great deal said, about
the essence of all religion consisting in love to God; and about men
'rejecting the cumbrous dogmas of the New Testament, and falling back
upon the great and simple truths, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with
all thy strength; and thy neighbour as thyself,' and saying 'that is
their religion.' Well, I venture to say that without the faith of the
heart in, not the cumbrous dogmas, but the central fact of the New
Testament, that Christ died on the Cross for me, you will never get the
old commandment of love to God with heart and soul and strength and mind
really kept and carried out; and that if you want men to have their
hearts and wills bound into loving fellowship with God, it is only by
the path of faith in Him who is the sacrifice for sin that such
fellowship is reached. Hence there follows a very plain, practical
advice. Do you want your heart's love to be increased? Learn the way to
do it. You cannot work yourselves into a fervour of religious emotion of
any valuable kind. A man cannot get to love more by saying, 'I am
determined I will.' We have no direct control over our affections in
that fashion. You cannot make water boil except by one way, and that is
by putting plenty of fire under it; and you cannot make your a