which all hangs. Religion is harmony with God; that harmony is produced
by love; and that love is produced by faith. Therefore the fundamental
of all Christianity in the soul is faith. Would this sound any fresher
and more obvious if we varied the language, and said that to be
religious we must be like God, that to be like Him we must love Him, and
that to love Him we must be sure that He loves us? Surely that is too
plain to need enlarging on.

And is it not true that faith must precede our love to God, and affords
the only possible basis on which that can be built? How can we love Him
so long as we are in doubt of His heart, or misconceive His character,
as if it were only power and wisdom, or awful severity? Men cannot love
an unseen person at all, without some very special token of his personal
affection for them. The history of all religions shows that where the
gods have been thought of as unloving, the worshippers have been
heartless too. It is only when we know and believe the love that God
hath to us, that we come to cherish any corresponding emotion to Him.
Our love is secondary, His is primary; ours is reflection, His the
original beam; ours is echo, His the mother-tone. Heaven must bend to
earth before earth can rise to heaven. The skies must open and drop down
love, ere love can spring in the fruitful fields. And it is only when we
look with true trust to that great unveiling of the heart of God which
is in Jesus Christ, only when we can say, 'Herein is love--that He gave
His Son to be the propitiation for our sins,' that our hearts are
melted, and all their snows are dissolved into sweet waters, which,
freed from their icy chains, can flow with music in their ripple and
fruitfulness along their course, through our otherwise silent and barren
lives. Faith in Christ is the only possible basis for active love to
God.

And this thought presents the point of contact between the teaching of
Paul and John. The one dwells on faith, the other on love, but he who
insists most on the former declares that it produces its effects on
character by the latter; and he who insists most on the latter is
forward to proclaim that it owes its very existence to the former.

It presents also the point of contact between Paul and James. The one
speaks of the essential of Christianity as faith, the other as works.
They are only striking the stream at different points, one at the
fountain-head, one far down its course among the