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tolic writings is referred back to the example of Christ in becoming man for us,—in teaching, labouring, suffering, and finally dying for us. It is our Lord Himself who first sets forth the Incarnation as the proof of unsurpassable love on the part of the Creator. "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son." It is our Lord Himself who first made the appeal from the divine love to the human, on the eve of His passion. "A new commandment I give to you, that love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another."* But the commandment was an old one, and together with the love of God, out of which it flowed, was, as He had before declared, even the great commandment of the law, on which the whole law and the prophets depended. How then was it new? It was new in its motive and new in its standard: for it ran no longer, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," but "as I have loved you." The imitation of Himself, therefore, was the motive; the standard was God becoming man for man's sake, and as man dying for him. He makes the application so that none can mistake it. "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends, if you do the things that I command you." Thus out of loving

John iii. 16; xiii. 34.

† John xv. 13.

our neighbour as ourself in the old law is developed by means of our Lord's passion the martyrdom of charity in the new law. St. John draws the same conclusions thus: "By this hath the charity of God appeared towards us, because God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we may live by Him." Here is the first point of the divine love, God becoming man. But there is a second; for he urges more strongly, "In this is charity, not as though we had loved God, but because He has first loved us, and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins." Here is the second point, the passion of God become man. From both he concludes: "If God hath so loved us, we ought also to love one another." And again: "In this we have known charity, because He hath laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."* Nor is St. Paul behind St. John

in putting forth this motive when he says: "God commends His charity towards us, because when as yet we were sinners Christ died for us." And on this he rests the spring of the interior life: "The charity of Christ constrains us, judging this, that if one died for all, then all were dead. And Christ died for all, that they also who live may not live to themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again."†

And as the Incarnation of the Son of God and His death are put forward as the standard of the † Rom. v. 8; 2 Cor. v. 13.

1 John iv. 9-11; iii. 16.

divine love to man, and as the motive of an answering love on the part of man to God, so the love thus called forth is a quality produced in man's will by that Third Person who is the Love of the Father and the Son: for "the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us. Thus it is not only a special virtue, but, as extending itself to all the acts and habits of the soul, is the root at once and the perfection of all virtues. It produces so exactly the fruits of divine grace that theologians have a hard matter to distinguish the habit of charity from grace itself. And it has a single object before it, God; its relation to creatures being determined by its relation to God. Thus, being the first operation of grace, it as completely penetrates and underlies the whole Christian character as the soul is in every part of the body, the life of the whole. And so charity alone is called at once "the new creation," "the fulfilment of the law," "the bond of perfection."†

To complete our view of this virtue, we must remark how entirely new it was to all the heathen nations. There is not in Greek and Roman life,

in any system of philosophy, the remotest ap

• Rom. v. 5.

† Compare together Gal. vi. 15, v. 6, 1 Cor. vii. 19, with Rom. xiii. 8-10, and Col. iii. 14. By the former three texts it appears that St. Paul names "the new creation,” “faith which works by love," and "the keeping the commandments of God," as equivalents. In the fourth he calls charity "the fulfilment of the law;" and in the fifth "the bond of perfection."

supreme

proach to any virtue like Christian charity. And the reason of this is plain. For there being two rules of human actions, the reason of man, and the absolute reason of God, or the eternal Law, they had lost the conception of any rule but the former. They had ceased to conceive of God as the rule which should regulate human reason; ceased to aspire to Him as the absolute good. Nor, indeed, so far as they held His unity, did they hold Him to be a personal God at all. Thus that movement of the soul towards Him and towards the rational creature for His sake, which is the proper act of charity, was not only far beyond their power as a supernatural act, but found no disposition of their will or their understanding to it.

And here we might terminate this portion of our argument; for if Charity be in such sense the seal and character of the Christian, that without it all other virtues are of no avail in the sight of God, and if it have so intimate a connection with the Incarnation and Death of Christ as to be a gift of God resulting from these, it might seem that nothing further could be said. Yet it will be well to continue our review so far as to see how other virtues are exhibited in relation to the same great objects of faith.

And I will take next the virtue of moral purity, because it was one almost as little known to the whole heathen world as charity. It was here that the degradation of man was most complete. In

the mass of men the body had made the mind its subject, and men had become the slaves of sensual enjoyment. On the other hand, and as a reaction from this, the highest philosophy denied that the body was a part of the man, or that together with the mind it made up the man, and asserted that the real man was the reasonable soul, which used the body as an instrument. But here, from the opposite side, it dishonoured the body, for an instrument is but a means to an end and has no intrinsic value. Now the Son of God, by assuming a human body, consecrated the body for ever: by taking it, as well as the soul, into indivisible union with His Godhead, He showed it to be a part of human nature which has its own intrinsic value and dignity. And His disciples inculcated the virtue of moral purity as based upon the Incarnation and its result, union with God. It was the whole man who was taken into this union, not the rational soul only, but the body likewise. And more even than this. It was from the Body of the Lord, in virtue of its personal union with His Godhead, that the union of His members with Him proceeded: for "we are members of His Body, of His flesh, and of His bones;"* from His Body that their perpetual food was drawn in the greatest of Christian mysteries. And so, as a part of this teaching, Christians were told, "the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body; and God,

Ephes. v. 30.