November 22

Eighteenth Friday after Trinity

His commandments are not grievous. 1 S. John 5:3.

TRUE love of man cannot be without love of God, nor true love of God without love of man. Nor can there be true love of God which does not love His commandments. Who ever loved, and loved not the will of the object of that love? How much more, when He Who is loved is the Fountain of all good, Whose will is very good, the rule, and law, and substance of all good? And "His commandments are not grievous." For nothing is grievous to him who loves. They are not grievous, because love makes them light; they are not grievous, because Christ gives strength to bear them. God's commands are no weight to the soul, which, through His Spirit, He upbears to Himself; nay, rather, the soul through them the more soars aloft and loses itself in the love of God. They are not grievous, because everything "which is born of God overcometh the world." Everything, "of every age or sex, time or clime," "which is born of God overcometh the world;" and that not of ourselves, but of the gift of God; not they, but the power through their new birth inborn in them, faith, love, grace from God unto God. And they, as wielding in them a power not their own, overcome the world, a power which would lift us above all hindrances, carry us over all temptations, the almighty power of the grace of God.

It is Thy strength alone, alone Thy strength

That strengthens me;

And for that strength of Thine that strengthens—my Strength,

I come to Thee.