d be found
less pure in theory than they. Must the Lord hide from his friends that
they will have cause to rejoice that they have been obedient? Must he
give them no help to counterbalance the load with which they start on
their race? Is he to tell them the horrors of the persecutions that
await them, and not the sweet sympathies that will help them through?
Was it wrong to assure them that where he was going they should go also?
The Lord could not demand of them more righteousness than he does: 'Be
ye therefore perfect as your father in heaven is perfect;' but not to
help them by word of love, deed of power, and promise of good, would
have shown him far less of a brother and a saviour. It is the part of
the enemy of righteousness to increase the difficulties in the way of
becoming righteous, and to diminish those in the way of seeming
righteous. Jesus desires no righteousness for the pride of being
righteous, any more than for advantage to be gained by it; therefore,
while requiring such purity as the man, beforehand, is unable to
imagine, he gives him all the encouragement he can. He will not enhance
his victory by difficulties--of them there are enough--but by
completeness. He will not demand the loftiest motives in the yet far
from loftiest soul: to those the soul must grow. He will hearten the
child with promises, and fulfil them to the contentment of the man.

Men cannot be righteous without love; to love a righteous man is the
best, the only way to learn righteousness: the Lord gives us himself to
love, and promises his closest friendship to them that overcome.

God's rewards are always in kind. 'I am your father; be my children, and
I will be your father.' Every obedience is the opening of another door
into the boundless universe of life. So long as the constitution of that
universe remains, so long as the world continues to be made by God,
righteousness can never fail of perfect reward. Before it could be
otherwise, the government must have passed into other hands.

The idea of merit is nowise essential to that of reward. Jesus tells us
that the lord who finds his servant faithful, will make him sit down to
meat, and come forth and serve him; he says likewise, 'When ye have done
all, say we are unprofitable servants; we have done only that which it
was our duty to do.' Reward is the rebound of Virtue's well-served ball
from the hand of Love; a sense of merit is the most sneaking shape that
self-satisfaction c