+I. Love.+--1. The love of God. (1) Shown in a desire of fellowship
with God. (2) To love the Word of God above all earthly treasure, and
to tread our own will underfoot. (3) The love of them that love God
and Christ. 2. The love of our neighbour. This is love indeed, to
show love and to do good to them that wrong and abuse us.
+II. Joy.+--1. To rejoice in the true acknowledgment of God. 2. To
rejoice in the work of our regeneration. 3. To rejoice in the hope of
eternal glory.
+III. Peace.+--To maintain peace and concord: 1. Neither take offence
nor give offence. 2. Seek to edify one another; either do good or
take good.
+IV. Longsuffering.+--To moderate our anger and desire of revenge
when many and great wrongs are done us. Set and sow this plant in the
furrows of your heart, and consider: 1. The goodness of God, who
forgives more to us than we can forgive. 2. It is the duty of love to
suffer and forbear. 3. It is a point of injustice to revenge
ourselves, for then we take to ourselves the honour of God, and
against all equity--we are the parties and judge and witness and all.
4. We are often ignorant of the mind of men in their actions, and of
the true circumstances thereof, and so may easily be deceived.
+V. Gentleness.+--Right courtesy is with an honest heart to bless
when we are wronged.
+VI. Goodness.+--The virtue whereby we communicate to others good
things, for their good and benefit.
+VII. Faith.+--Faith towards man, which means: 1. To speak the truth
from the heart. 2. To be faithful and just in the keeping of our
honest promise and word. This faith a rare virtue in these days. The
common fashion of them that live by bargaining is to use glorying,
facing, soothing, lying, dissembling, and all manner of shifts. They
that deal with chapmen shall hardly know what is truth, they have so
many words and so many shifts.
+VIII. Meekness.+--The same in effect with longsuffering. The
difference is that meekness is more general, and longsuffering the
highest degree of meekness.
+IX. Temperance.+--The moderation of lust and appetite in the use of
the gifts and creatures of God. 1. We must use moderation in meats
and drinks. That measure of meat and drink which serves to refresh
nature and make us fit for the service of God and man is allowed us
of God and no more. 2. We must use moderation in the getting of
goods. 3. In the spending of our goods--contrary to the fashion of
many who spend their substance in feasting and company, and keep
their wives and children bare at home. 4. In our apparel. To apparel
ourselves according to our sex, according to the received fashion of
our country, according to our place and degree, and according to our
ability.
+X. Against such virtues there is no law.+--1. No law to condemn.
2. No law to compel obedience. Spiritual men freely obey God, as if
there were no law; they are a voluntary and free people, serving God
without restraint.--_Perkins._
Ver. 22. _Love an Attendant of Regeneration._--1. Love is a delight
in happiness. 2. Is universal. 3. Is just. 4. Is disinterested. 5. Is
an active principle. 6. Is the only voluntary cause of happiness.
7. Is the only equitable spirit towards God and our fellow-creatures.
8. Is the only disposition which can be approved or loved by
God.--_Dr. Dwight._
_The Powers of Love._--If these be the fruit of the Spirit, they
cannot be mere matters of temperament. When philosophy gives an
account of the human soul it can find only constitutional
propensities and voluntary acquisitions. When we interrogate
Christianity, we are told besides of communicated sanctities, states
of mind which inheritance cannot give or resolution command, which
need some touch of God to wake them up, which are above us and yet
ours, and seem to lie on the borderland of communion between the
finite and the infinite Spirit.
+I. There is humane love,+ which constitutes the humblest and most
frequent form of unselfish feeling. It finds its objects among the
miserable and attaches itself to them in proportion to their woes. In
human pity there is a strange combination of repulsion and
attraction, which it is the paradox of philosophy to state, and the
mercy of God to ordain; it cannot endure the sight of wretchedness,
and yet can never leave it. But there is a work ordained for us which
this impulse will not suffice to do. Fastening itself on suffering
alone, it sees nothing else. Yet beneath the smooth and glossy
surface of easy life there may hide itself many an inward disease
which the mere glance of pity does not discern. Flourishing iniquity
that gives no seeming pain it lets alone; invisible corruption may
spread without arrest.
+II. There is imaginative or æsthetic love,+ which attaches itself to
objects in proportion as they are beautiful, kindles the enthusiasm
of art, and completes itself in the worship of genius. Yet is this
affection very barren until thrown into the midst of others to
harmonise and glorify them. No reciprocal sympathy is requisite to
this sentiment; that which is admired as beautiful does not admire in
return. And above all there is a direct tendency to turn with
indifference or even merciless repugnance from what is unlovely.
+III. There is moral love,+ which has reference to persons only, not
to things, which attaches itself to them in proportion as they are
good, judges them by the standard of an internal law, and expresses
itself in tones, not of tenderness as in pity, or of admiration as in
the trance of beauty, but of grave and earnest approval. Even this
moral love is not without imperfections. Its characteristic sentiment
of approbation has always in it a certain patronising air not welcome
to the mercy of a true heart, and more like the rigour of a Zeno than
the grace of Christ.
+IV. There is a Divine love,+ directed first upon God Himself, and
thence drawn into the likeness of His own love, and going forth upon
other natures in proportion to their worth and claims. This is the
crowning and calming term of all prior affections, presupposing them,
and lifting them up from clashing and unrest to harmony and peace.
The humane, the beautiful, the right, remain only scattered elements
of good till they are gathered into the Divine and blended into one
by the combining love of God.--_Dr. Martineau._
_Love the Perfection of Character._--The fruit of the _true_ vine has
been analysed, and in the best specimens nine ingredients are found.
In poor samples there is a deficiency of one or other of these
elements. A dry and diminutive sort is lacking in peace and joy. A
tart kind, which sets the teeth on edge, owes its austerity to its
scanty infusion of gentleness, goodness, and meekness. There is a
watery, deliquescent sort which, for the want of longsuffering, is
not easily preserved; and there is a flat variety which, having no
body of faith or temperance, answers few useful purposes. Love is the
essential principle which is in no case entirely absent, and by the
glistening fulness and rich aroma which its plentiful presence
creates you can recognise the freshest and most generous clusters,
whilst the predominance of some other element gives to each its
distinguishing flavour, and marks the growth of Eshcol, Sibmah, or
Lebanon.--_Dr. James Hamilton._
_The Power of Meekness and Affection._--Once in Holland a person of
high rank invited Tersteegen to be his guest. This individual
imagined himself to have attained to a state of peculiar inward peace
and took occasion during dinner to criticise Tersteegen for being too
active, and for not sufficiently knowing the ground on which he
wrought. Tersteegen attended meekly and silently to all that was
said; and when dinner was over he offered up a fervent prayer in
which he commended his host to the Lord in terms of such affection
and compassion that this great and warm-tempered man was so much
struck and affected by it that his feelings overpowered him, and he
fell upon the neck of his guest and begged his forgiveness.
_Who are the Meek?_--A missionary to Jamaica was once questioning the
little black boys on the meaning of Matt. v. 5, and asked, "Who are
the meek?" A boy answered, "Those who give soft answers to rough
questions."
_The Grace of Gentleness._
+I. It is not a gift, but a grace.+--It is not a natural demeanour,
amiable and courteous, a soft, feminine compliance, but a grace of
the Spirit which takes into it the strength of the Divine. You may
have the instinct of delicacy, a natural tenderness and affability,
yet not have this grace of the Spirit which impels you for Christ's
sake to deal gently and save men. It is the underlying motive which
determines whether grace or nature reigns. How is it when your ideas
and methods of doing good are thwarted? Moses seems to have in
Zipporah what Socrates had in Xantippe, yet her abuse had no more
abiding effect on him than the spray which angry waves toss against
the rock. Calvin hearing of Luther's ire said, "Let him hate me and
call me a devil a thousand times; I will love him and call him a
precious servant of God."
+II. The cultivation of this grace will cost you many a
struggle.+--You are to get the better of your temper on your knees.
No minstrel as in the case of Saul can do the work. We must forgive
in our heart those who offend us.
+III. The grace of gentleness is a queen with a train of
virtues.+--It ennobles our whole nature. An English nobleman could
not be bound to keep the peace, for it was supposed that peace always
kept him. So we should suppose that every professed Christian would
have this grace; but if you should put your ear to the door of some
Christian homes, it would be like listening to a volcano. If you did
not behold a sulphurous flame bursting out, you might hear a
continual grumbling. A man said to me once, "When I see Mr. So-and-so
my passion is bigger than myself, and I long to make him feel it."
The Spirit of Christ leads us to pray for those who despitefully use
us. Only as His temper prevails in us shall we be able to illustrate
the beauty of Divine greatness.--_Homiletic Monthly._
_Constant Joy._--Father Taylor, the Boston sailor-preacher, when
going out to make a call, said to his host on the doorstep, "Laugh
till I get back."