=1. Love, the Fulfilling of the Law.=--"Peter says, 'Above all
things have fervent love [charity] among yourselves' [I Peter iv,
8]. _Above all things._ And John goes farther, 'God is love' [I
John iv, 8]. And you remember the profound remark which Paul
makes elsewhere, 'Love is the fulfilling of the law' [Rom. xiii,
10; Gal. v, 14]. Did you ever think what he meant by that? In
those days men were working their passage to heaven by keeping
the ten commandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments
which they had manufactured out of them. Christ said, I will show
you a more simple way. If you do one thing, you will do these
hundred and ten things without ever thinking about them. If you
love, you will unconsciously fulfil the whole law.... Take any of
the commandments, 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me.' If a
man love God you will not require to tell him that. Love is the
fulfilling of that law. 'Take not his name in vain.' Would he
ever dream of taking his name in vain if he loved him? 'Remember
the Sabbath day to keep it holy.' Would he not be too glad to
have one day in seven to dedicate more exclusively to the object
of his affection? Love would fulfil all these laws regarding God.
And so if he loved man, you would never think of telling him to
honor his father and mother. He could never do anything else. It
would be preposterous to tell him not to kill. You could only
insult him if you suggested that he should not steal,--how could
he steal from those he loved? It would be superfluous to beg him
not to bear false witness against his neighbor. If he loved him
it would be the last thing he would do. And you would never dream
of urging him not to covet what his neighbors had. He would
rather they possessed it than himself. In this way 'Love is the
fulfilling of the law.'"--Drummond: _The Greatest Thing in the
World_.
=2. Charity and Love.=--"According to the etymology and original
usage, _beneficence_ is the doing well, _benevolence_ the wishing
or willing well to others; but _benevolence_ has come to include
_beneficence_ and to displace it.... _Charity_, which originally
meant the purest love for God and man (as in I Cor. xiii), is now
almost universally applied to some form of _alms-giving_ and is
much more limited in meaning than _benevolence_."--_Standard
Dictionary._
_Charity_ means "properly, love, and hence acts of kindness. The
word never occurs in the Old Testament; in the New Testament it
is always, with one exception, synonymous with love, and in every
case the love of man toward his fellow man, and to that which is
good (see especially I Cor. xiii). The 'feasts of charity' in
Jude 12, are commonly understood to be the _agapæ_, or
'love-feasts,' which were prevalent in the early church, and
which consisted in a simple fraternal meeting for worship, and an
equally simple social repast."--_Bible Dictionary_, Cassell.
"Charity is only a little bit of love; one of the innumerable
avenues of love, and there may even be, and there is a great deal
of charity without love. It is a very easy thing to toss a copper
to a beggar on the street; it is generally an easier thing than
not to do it.... We purchase relief from the sympathetic feelings
roused by the spectacle of misery, at the copper's cost. It is
too cheap--too cheap for us, and often too dear for the beggar.
If we really loved him, we would either do more for him or
less."--Drummond: _The Greatest Thing in the World_.
=3. Man's Relationship to God.=--"'Mormonism' claims an actual
and literal relationship of parent and child between the Creator
and man--not in the figurative sense in which the engine may be
called the child of its builder; not the relationship of a thing
mechanically made to the maker thereof; but the connection
between father and offspring. In short it is bold enough to
declare that man's spirit being the offspring of Deity, and man's
body though of earthy components yet being in the very image and
likeness of God, man even in his present degraded--aye, fallen
condition--still possesses, if only in a latent state, inherited
traits, tendencies and powers that tell of his more than royal
descent; and that these may be developed so as to make him, even
while mortal, in a measure Godlike.
"But 'Mormonism' is bolder yet. It asserts that in accordance
with the inviolable law of organic nature--that like shall beget
like, and that multiplication of numbers and perpetuation of
species shall be in compliance with the condition 'each after his
kind,' the child may achieve the former status of the parent, and
that in his mortal condition man is a God in embryo. However far
in the future it may be, what ages may elapse, what eternities
may pass before any individual now a mortal being may attain the
rank and sanctity of godship, nevertheless man carries in his
soul the possibilities of such achievement; even as the crawling
caterpillar or the corpse-like chrysalis holds the latent
possibility, nay, barring destruction in an earlier stage, the
certainty indeed, of the winged imago in all the glory of
maturity.
"'Mormonism' claims that all nature, both on earth and in heaven,
operates on a plan of advancement; that the very Eternal Father
is a progressive Being; that his perfection, while so complete as
to be incomprehensible by man, possesses this essential quality
of true perfection--the capacity of eternal increase. That
therefore, in the far future, beyond the horizon of eternities
perchance, man may attain the status of a God. Yet this does not
mean that he shall be then the equal of the Deity we worship, nor
that he shall ever overtake those intelligences that are already
beyond him in advancement; for to assert such would be to argue
that there is no progression beyond a certain stage of
attainment, and that advancement is a characteristic of low
organization and inferior purpose alone. We believe that there
was more than the sounding of brass or the tinkling of wordy
cymbals in the fervent admonition of the Christ to his
followers--'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is
in heaven is perfect.'"--_The Philosophy of Mormonism_: The
Author, in _Improvement Era_, vol. iv, pp. 464-465.