The Worlds Great Sermons, Volume 10 | Page 7

calumny denounced.
So much for the analysis of love. Now the business of our lives is to
have these things in our characters. That is the supreme work to which
we need to address ourselves in this world to learn love. Is life not full
of opportunities for learning love? Every man and woman every day
has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground; it is a
schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the one eternal

lesson for us all is how better we can love. What makes a man a good
cricketer? Practise. What makes a man a good artist, a good sculptor, a
good musician? Practise. What makes a man a good linguist, a good
stenographer? Practise. What makes a man a good man. Practise.
Nothing else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do not get
the soul in different ways, under different laws, from those in which we
get the body and the mind. If a man does not exercise his arm he
develops no biceps muscle; and if he does not exercise his soul, he
acquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigor of
moral fiber nor beauty of spiritual growth. Love is not a thing of
enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression of
the whole round Christian character--the Christlike nature in its fullest
development. And the constituents of this great character are only to be
built up by ceaseless practise.
What was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop? Practising. Tho perfect,
we read that He learned obedience, and grew in wisdom and in favor
with God. Do not quarrel, therefore, with your lot in life. Do not
complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the
vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to live
and work with. Above all, do not resent temptation; do not be
perplexed because it seems to thicken round you more and more, and
ceases neither for effort nor for agony nor prayer. That is your practise.
That is the practise which God appoints you; and it is having its work
in making you patient, and humble, and generous, and unselfish, and
kind, and courteous. Do not grudge the hand that is molding the still
too shapeless image within you. It is growing more beautiful, tho you
see it not, and every touch of temptation may add to its perfection.
Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among
men, and among things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and
obstacles. You remember Goethe's words: _Es bildet ein Talent sich in
der Stille, Doch ein Character in dem Strom der Welt_. "Talent
develops itself in solitude; character in the stream of life." Talent
develops itself in solitude--the talent of prayer, of faith, of meditation,
of seeing the unseen; character grows in the stream of the world's life.
That chiefly is where men are to learn love.
How? Now how? To make it easier, I have named a few of the
elements of love. But these are only elements. Love itself can never be

defined. Light is a something more than the sum of its ingredients--a
glowing, dazzling, tremulous ether. And love is something more than
all its elements--a palpitating, quivering, sensitive, living thing. By
synthesis of all the colors, men can make whiteness, they can not make
light. By synthesis of all the virtues, men can make virtue, they can not
make love. How then are we to have this transcendent living whole
conveyed into our souls? We brace our wills to secure it. We try to
copy those who have it. We lay down rules about it. We watch. We
pray. But these things alone will not bring love into our nature. Love is
an effect. And only as we fulfil the right condition can we have the
effect produced. Shall I tell you what the cause is?
If you turn to the Revised Version of the First Epistle of John you will
find these words: "We love because he first loved us." "We love," not
"We love him." That is the way the old version has it, and it is quite
wrong. "We love--because he first loved us." Look at that word
"because." It is the cause of which I have spoken. "Because he first
loved us," the effect follows that we love, we love Him, we love all
men. We can not help it. Because He loved us, we love, we love
everybody. Our heart is slowly changed. Contemplate the love of Christ,
and you will love. Stand before that mirror, reflect Christ's character,
and you will be changed into the same image from tenderness to
tenderness. There is no other way. You can not