ommandment in the whole breadth and meaning of that great
word _Love_. And then it just comes to this, that love is the
victor in all the Christian warfare. If we love God, at any given
moment, consciously having our affection engaged with Him, and our
heart going out to Him, do you think that any evil or temptation
would have power over us? Should we not see them as they are, to be
devils in disguise? In the proportion in which I love God I conquer
all sin. And at the moment in which that great, sweet, all-satisfying
light floods into my soul, I see through the hollowness and the
shams, and detect the ugliness and the filth of the things that
otherwise would be temptations. If you desire to be conquerors in the
Christian fight, remember that the true way of conquest is, as
another Apostle says, 'Keep yourselves in the love of God.' 'Let all
your things be done in charity.'

And, further, how beautifully the Apostle here puts the great truth
that we are all apt to forget, that the strongest type of human
character is the gentlest and most loving, and that the mighty man is
not the man of intellectual or material force, such as the world
idolises, but the man who is much because he loves much. If we would
come to supreme beauty of Christian character, there must be
inseparably manifested in our lives, and lived in our hearts,
strength and love, might and gentleness. That is the perfect man,
and that was the union which was set before us, in the highest form,
in the 'Strong Son of God, Immortal Love,' whom we call our Saviour,
and whom we are bound to follow. His soldiers conquer as the Captain
of their salvation has conquered, when watchfulness and steadfastness
and courage and strength are all baptized in love and perfected
thereby.

ANATHEMA AND GRACE

'The salutation of me Paul with mine own hand. 22. If
any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be
Anathema Maran-atha. 23. The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ be with you. 24. My love be with you all
in Christ Jesus.'--1 COR. xvi. 21-24.

Terror and tenderness are strangely mingled in this parting
salutation, which was added in the great characters shaped by Paul's
own hand, to the letter written by an amanuensis. He has been
obliged, throughout the whole epistle, to assume a tone of
remonstrance abundantly mingled with irony and sarcasm and
indignation. He has had to rebuke the Corinthians for many faults,
party spirit, lax morality,