February 15

We love him because He first loved us. - 1 John 4:19.

DR. DODDRIDGE had a very amiable child who died under nine years of age: she was a universal favourite among all who knew her. And one day when her father asked her, “How is it that all love you?” she replied, “I cannot tell, unless it be that I love everybody.” This was not only a striking answer for a child, but it was even a philosophical one, if I may so say. Seneca has given us a recipe for love, or a love-charm, prescribed by an old philosopher, and the only charm that ever did, or can, or will produce it, namely, “Love,” says he, “if you would be loved.” Why, love is governed by certain laws, as well as every thing else in the universe.

It is not in our power to love an unlovely object; but, though not always in our power to love, it is always in our power to be loved if we choose. Most persons wish to be loved: some, indeed, are half angry, or at least grieved because they are not so much loved as some of their neighbours and acquaintances; but they do not remember that what they require of these towards them does not depend upon others but upon themselves. If any are filled with self-conceit and self-sufficiency, if they are hard-hearted and close-fisted, if they are mean and stingy and hoarding and grasping, and if in every thing they show only a regard to their own advantage, what mortal upon earth can love them? We do not refer now to benevolence, but to esteem and attachment. What mortal upon earth can love such persons? And how foolish and wicked must they be to expect it and exact it from a fellow-creature! “He that will have a friend,” says Solomon, “must show himself friendly;” and he that would be loved must show himself lovely. “Let no man,” says Paul to Timothy, “despise thee.”

How can I help this? Am I to be made answerable for the feelings of others towards me? Surely you are, says the apostle. No man can despise you unless you choose. One man may oppose you, another persecute you; but display the proper feelings and maintain the proper courage of a Christian and a Christian minister, and it will not be in the power of any individual to despise you. So said Paul. Suppose persons wished to be loved, and were to scold people for not loving them; suppose they were to order others to love them, and threaten them if they do not: would this secure the effect? This would drive them further off than before.

It is goodness alone that makes one man love another. Power may cause a man to be feared; authority, to be reverenced; wealth, to be envied; learning, to be admired; genius, to be praised; but it is only goodness that chains one heart to another:-“For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet, peradventure, for a good man, some would even dare to die.” It is absurd to think of ever producing love by a legal process. The law is indeed good, and the law requires us to love God with all our heart, and with all our mind, and with all our strength, and it can righteously require nothing less; but then it can never produce this. The law worketh wrath, and upon a mind conscious of guilt it can work nothing else till we have an assured hope of forgiveness. Love never was produced, and never can be produced, by a mere display of terror, or even authority.

“Law and terrors do but harden

All the while they work alone;

But a sense of blood-bought pardon

Soon dissolves a heart of stone.”