Love
PROFESSOR DRUMMOND entitled his little book on love The Greatest Thing in the World, and the vast circulation which it secured in every part of the globe proved how the suggestion had appealed to the general mind. But he was only following the hint given in the saying of St. Paul, ‘The greatest of these is charity.’ And St. Paul was only following in the wake of Jesus, who, when asked, ‘Which is the greatest commandment in the law? ’ replied, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’
The belief that love is the greatest thing in the world may be called a growing conviction; the more mature the mind of mankind becomes, the clearer is its verdict to this effect; and this is the judgment of those most entitled to express an opinion. Inferior minds have, indeed, different ideals; and in earlier ages other qualities were placed far before love. Thus, strength long had its worshippers, and it will always have them among the immature and unreflecting, who bow the knee to physical development and material resources. At a more advanced stage cleverness was considered the greatest thing in the world; and there are still multitudes who testify unbounded admiration for the intellectual force which can crush an adversary or the adroitness which can circumvent him. But, while the notoriety of the hour may rise loud round those distinguished
H for strength and cleverness, it is found, when the clamour subsides, that the abiding homage of the human heart can be given only to those who have served their circle or their generation with the ministry of love. ‘Love never faileth.’
It is one of the most signal evidences of the goodness of the Author of our existence that in the scheme of Providence there is provision made, between the cradle and the grave, for the supply to the individual of many different kinds of love in succession, while the heart, on its side, puts forth one new blossom after another to the very end. We open our baby eyes on love, with which we have been already surrounded before we were able to appreciate it — the love of parents. Then, as the family fills and its connections multiply, we are enriched with the love of brothers and sisters, cousins and other relatives. When we emerge from childhood into that period of life in which the currents of the heart are most copious, we begin to experience the love of country and of comradeship; friendship springs up with those of the same sex, and a still dearer tie with the opposite sex. This tie finds its consummation in marriage; and then follows the love of off spring, with its manifold lights and shades of joy and pride, anxiety and sorrow. To some it is vouchsafed to experience the love of grandparents for grandchildren; and at even a later stage a fresh bud may burst on the old tree in the love of greatgrandparents for great-grandchildren.
Even these are not all the kinds of affection of which the heart is capable; but these are enough to show that under the one name of love many feelings are included which really differ widely from one another. The love, for example, of those of the same sex is exceedingly different from that of persons of opposite sexes, and a person who has experienced the one may have very little idea what the other is like. One or more kinds of affection may be omitted in the development of a human heart through no fault of its own, but through the appointment of Providence; and such an omission may not prejudice the growth of an affectionate nature; but the heart cannot miss any of its legitimate opportunities with out suffering loss; and, as a rule, those are happiest whose development has been most normal — the heart unfolding each new blossom as the season for it arrives, and every kind of affection being experienced in full measure. It is sad for a child whose parents are alive never to have received in its fulness the love of father or mother, or never to have given its own love back in return. It is a kind of mutilation and must leave the whole nature permanently impoverished. If any kind of love is denied to us providentially, it is well to make up for the loss by loving more amply in some other direction. For example, one who has no brothers or sisters should have all the wider a circle of friends.
II
Professor Drummond, in another of his books, The Ascent of Man, has written with great beauty on maternal love, which he evidently regarded as the choicest flower and blossom of earthly affection. He traced its history down through the dim aeons of prehistoric times, from the jealous instinct of brute mothers to its most perfect refinement in the womanhood of the Christian world; and he showed that this instinct for the preservation of the life of others had been the great counterpoise to the instinct of self-preservation. Thus from immemorial ages there has been woven into the web of the world’s history not a single but a double thread — not only the struggle for existence, often degenerating into cruelty and violence, but the struggle for the existence of others, marked all along its course by self-sacrifice. And so it has come to pass that the world has been, not merely a field of battle and butchery, but a scene of heroism and everwaxing beauty. Whether or not we accept the assumption that the maternal love of to-day is a development which has grown from millennium to millennium, till it has reached its presentdepth and tenderness, at any rate no man who has enjoyed the privilege of watching it at close quarters — its purity, its passion, its cooing happiness and elation, the power it imparts to the mother of overcoming sleep and rendering with cheerfulness and dignity the most menial services — will fail to bend before it in lowly worship and acknowledge that, if there is one divine thing in this world, it is a mother’s love.
But even those kinds of affection which have been less celebrated have their honour and value. The love, for instance, of brother and sister may be of exquisite tenderness, as it may be of priceless profit to both parties, when he, the stronger, learns gentleness by stooping to her weakness, and she, the weaker, acquires courage and strength in the effort to keep step with his career. There are few figures more touching in biography than such a sister as Dorothy Wordsworth, the companion of one engaged in achieving a difficult and noble life-work in the eyes of the world, which she is furthering all the time with the ministry of frugality, practi cality and good sense, content to remain invisible in the back ground, her unselfish heart satisfied with the honours that are falling upon him.
The love of friends has had ample justice done to it from the time of David and Jonathan down to our own time, when Lord Tennyson has — in In Memoriam — raised to his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, a monument more enduring than brass. In this poem we see what friendship can do to quicken any one’s best powers and to develop all that is noble in character; for a superior friend’s generous expectations are a standard to which one’s own achievements must strive to rise, while, if his character is of the right stamp, his presence serves as a second conscience, administering the requisite check when one’s own conscience is for the moment remiss, and forming a tribunal before which one cannot appear with a base pur pose in his mind.
Of course, however, it is love between man and woman which is love par excellence. It is this that poets speak of as the one experience which, if obtained and held, makes life a success, but, if missed, makes all a blank —
For life, with all it yields of joy and
woe,
Of hope and fear, Is just our chance o’ the prize of
learning love.
In works of imagination love occupies the same place as Christ does in sermons: it is the element on which the savour of the whole depends.
In sober fact, this is in many respects, the greatest thing in the world. Never is a human heart purer — purer from selfishness and purer from animal desire — than when it falls honestly and thoroughly in love. Nothing marks a more decided and undeniable advance in civilisation than an improvement in the mode of conceiving what love is and in the modes of carrying on the relationship — such as can be noted, for example, in a comparison of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Nothing is such a spur to the exertion of all a man’s powers as the desire to provide for the fruition of love; and a pure love, housed in a happy home, is, next to the grace of God, the best blessing any man can win.
Though, up to this point, I have been speaking of many kinds of love, these have all been between man and man. Is there no other of which the heart is capable and for which it is destined? Yes; there are objects of love for the human heart both below and above man.
Of the objects beneath man much need not be said; but I will not miss the opportunity of remarking, in passing, that the affection of the Arab for his steed, of the Indian for his elephant, of the shepherd for his dog, is a sentiment creditable to human nature. The treatment of the lower animals is one of the most accurate measurements of the stage which civilisation has readied in any country. Cruelty to these dumb companions of man’s earthly lot hardens the heart and coarsens the character; and few movements can be more acceptable to the Creator, who pours out His love on even the humblest of His creatures, than the societies formed in our day for promoting kindness towards the lower animals.
But it is to love at the opposite end of the scale I wish to advert — love to beings above man.
Even so wise a representative of the ancient world as Aristotle says, ‘There is no such thing as love to God; it is absurd to speak of anything of the kind; for God is an unknowable being.’ Words cannot be conceived which would bring out more clearly the contrast between the circle of thought within which the ancient world moved and that wherein those move who have obtained their notions of the universe from the Bible. Even in the Old Testament God is a being who loves, and loves intensely: ‘Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.” Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.’ ‘Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore, with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” I will betroth thee unto Me forever; yea, I will betroth them unto Me in righteousness and in judgment and in lovingkindness and in mercies; I will even betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know the Lord.’ In the New Testament the revelation of the love of God is carried much further, till it culminates in the incomparable saying, ‘God is love.’
It is often said that any modern child acquainted with the rudiments of science stands on a far higher level than Aristotle, though he was the most scientific head in the ancient world, so far have the discoveries of modern times left the ancient world behind; and it is just as true to say that any modern child acquainted with the Bible stands as high above Aristotle in the knowledge of God. To Aristotle God was, according to the sage’s own admission, an unknown being; but to those who have the Bible in their hands He is a being known, living and infinitely lov ing; and this renders possible the budding of the noblest blossom of the heart — the love of God. Just as a human heart is born with the kinds of love already discussed — love to parents, love to friends, love to children, and so on — potential in it, waiting only for time and opportunity to burst and develop, so every heart is born with the capacity of loving God; and this must, in the nature of the case, be the highest and most influential of all such capabilities. But the sunshine which opens the bud, causing the potentiality to become actuality, is the love of God revealed and realised. So St. John explained its philosophy — ‘We love Him because He first loved us.’
I was much struck by this testimony of some one as to his own experience: ‘All that I ever heard — and I heard much — about the love of God was to me sound and smoke, until I realised that the Son of God had given up His life on the cross to redeem me from my sins.’ And there is no doubt that this is the way in which most people begin to love God, if they love Him with reality and with intensity. It is not only that the love of the Father is supremely and finally revealed in the gift of His Son; but in Christ Himself the divine love shines forth in the most affecting and attractive of all forms; it shines out all along the course of His life with increasing brightness; and it blazes from His cross. We, therefore, love Jesus first, and then the Father: we come to the Father through the Son.
There can be no doubt that, ever since He was crucified on Calvary, Jesus Christ has commanded the love of tens of thousands in every generation, and that the strength of Christianity at any time is accurately measured by the number of those who love Him and the intensity with which they do so. If the question be asked, ‘What is a Christian? ’ many answers could doubtless be given; but is any of them more to the point than this: ‘A Christian is one who loves Christ? ’
Sometimes this love dawns upon the heart with sudden rapture, similar to that which, in the relations of human beings, often accompanies what is called falling in love. But this sublime happiness is not vouchsafed to all. Many who undoubtedly love Him have no recollection when they commenced to do so. The essential question is not, however, how love began, but whether it is growing. And love to Christ grows exactly by the same means as love to any one else — by being constantly in His company, by speaking often to Him, by gazing on the beauty of His character, and by not forgetting all His benefits.
IV
Some are jealous of expressions of love to God because they suspect that these may be substituted for acts of love to man. And it cannot be denied that zeal for God has sometimes been associated with cruelty and hard-heartedness towards man, as, for example,tn the burning of heretics and the torture of witches.
But such cases are exceptional and unnatural. The normal effect of love to God is love to man. Professor Drummond has drawn attention to the fact that the correct translation of a verse quoted already is not, ‘We love Him because He first loved us, but, ‘We love because He first loved us.’ The love of God realised leads to all kinds of love, because it breaks down the natural selfishness of the heart, which is the great obstacle to every kind of tender feeling towards others. Is it not a contradiction in terms to speak of loving Christ when we do not love our fellow-men? If the word of Jesus has any weight with us, if His example, in any degree, influences our conduct, if His spirit has even faintly entered our heart, then we cannot be loveless to our fellow-creatures. ‘This commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.’
In spite of the satire so frequently poured from the pulpit and through the press on the behaviour of Christians to one an other, the fact is, the feeling of true Christians for one another is very deep and tender. Let them meet anywhere — even in the ends of the earth — and recognise one another as such, and their hearts leap together at once, and there is nothing they will not do for one another. If they hesitate to give such recognition, it is because they are not sure of their ground; but let them be sure, and kindness immediately follows.
I venture even to say that the average behaviour of Christians to those whom they cannot identify as real Christians proves that the love of God in their hearts has improved their feelings and their conduct. It is, indeed, impossible to feel for such the same love as for those who are brethren in the Lord. But all men are potential Christians: they are all capable of being saved and becoming heirs of immortality: and this gives them all a claim on our love — not only on our evangelistic and proselytising zeal, but on our humanity and kindness. On this subject let me quote a few words from the same author with whom I commenced this chapter. Addressing a band of missionaries, Professor Drummond once said: ‘You can take nothing greater to the heathen world than the impress and reflection of the love of God upon your own character. This is the universal language. It will take you years to speak in Chinese or in the dialects of India. But, from the day you land, that language of love, understood by all, will be pouring forth its unconscious eloquence. Take into your new sphere of labour, where you also mean to lay down your life, that simple charm, and your life-work must succeed. You can take nothing greater, you can take nothing less. You may take every accomplishment, you may be braced for every sacrifice, but, if you give your body to be burned, and have not love, it will profit you and the cause of Christ nothing.’