Our only ground of assurance that Love forgives us is our loving forgiveness of others. In the light of that fact of experience it is easy and obvious to believe that the Father whose children we are, is not less loving and forgiving than we. If we restore to our esteem and friendship those who have wronged us, then we are sure that Love at the heart of the Universe, Love in the Father, Love in all the Father's true children, fully and freely forgives us. If we have this experience of our own forgiveness of our fellows, we know that Love would not be Love, but hate, God would not be God, but a devil, if any sincerely repented wrong or shortcoming of which we have been guilty could remain unforgiven.
"For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
To judge harshly another man's failings, however bad they may be, shows that we are less loving than he. For he may have failed through strength of appetite, or heat of passion,—failings that are still consistent with Love; but harsh judgment has no such excuse, and is therefore a deadly—that is, loveless—sin. We would never think of proclaiming to the idly curious or the coldly critical the failings of one whom we love; hence proclamations of any one's failings is a sure sign that we have no Love for him, and as long as there are any whom we do not love and protect, we have no part or lot in the great Love of God. Yet such charitableness does not forbid our practical judgment of the difference between sheep and wolves, good men and bad, when important issues are involved. That Love requires. What it forbids is the rolling as a sweet morsel under our tongue, and the gleeful recital to others, of the mistake or the sin of another, as something in which we take mean delight because we think it makes him inferior to ourselves.
"Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me cast out the mote out of thine eye, and lo, the beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
Love will waste no time trying to explain itself to the selfish. If Love does not commend itself by its own light and warmth to a man, no forms of words can make him understand it. The sensual, the greedy, the hard, and the cruel Love will treat as gently and kindly as circumstances permit; yet expect as a matter of course that they will interpret Love's justice as hardness, kindness as weakness, temperance as asceticism, forbearance as cowardice, sacrifice as stupidity. Those who love will not mind being misunderstood by those who do not; knowing that any attempted explanation would only increase their conceit and hardness of heart, and so make a bad matter worse.
"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine, lest haply they trample them under their feet, and turn and rend you."
Since Love is "the greatest thing in the world," we are bound to stand ready with girt loins, and trimmed, burning lamps, to shed its light far and wide. To cover it up would be to deprive ourselves and our fellows of the one sight in all the world best worth seeing, and so to hinder its spread. False modesty that would keep Love's good works out of sight is as bad as false pride that would thrust oneself forward. Though works done merely to be seen are not good at all, yet good works genuinely done for Love's sake gain added influence and lustre when frankly and freely allowed to be seen as the beautiful things that they are. The Christian is under spiritual compulsion to be a missionary. Other systems draw their little circles of disciples about them, as Jesus drew His twelve. One cannot hold what he believes to be a true and helpful view of life without wishing to communicate it to others. Yet this tendency, which is natural to every principle, is characteristic of Christianity in a unique degree. For the Christian Spirit consists in Love, the desire to give to others the best one has. And what can be so good, so desirable to impart, as this very Spirit of Love, which is Christianity itself? That is why the Christian must, in some form or other,—by journeying to foreign lands, by contribution to missionary work at home, by gifts to Christian education, by support of settlement work, or perhaps best of all by the silent diffusion of a Christian example in the neighbourhood, or the unnoticed expression of the Christian Spirit in the home,—be a propagator of the Spirit of Love he has himself received.
"Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a lamp and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house. Even so let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."
VI
THE BLESSEDNESS OF LOVE
Does virtue bring happiness? is a question every philosophy of life must meet. Yet before it can be rightly answered it must be rightly put.