at there
are scores of men and women whom a preacher's words reach who would
be ashamed of themselves, and rightly, if they exhibited the same
callousness of heart and selfishness of ingratitude to some human,
partial benefactor as they are not ashamed to have exhibited all
their lives to Jesus Christ. Echo? Yes! your heartstrings are set
vibrating fast enough whenever, in the adjoining apartment, an
instrument is touched which is tuned to the same key as your heart.
Pleasures, earthly aims, worldly gifts, the sweetnesses of human
life, all these things set them thrilling, and you can hear the
music, but your hearts are not tuned to answer to the note that is
struck in 'He loved me and gave Himself for me.' The bugle is blown,
and there is silence, and no echo, faint and far, comes whispering
back. Brethren, we use no one else, in whose love we have any belief,
a thousandth part so ill as we use Jesus Christ.

III. Now, lastly, let me say a word about the constraining influence
of this echoed love.

Its first effect, if it has any real power in our hearts and lives,
will be to change their centre, to decentralise. Look what the
Apostle goes on to say: 'We thus judge that He ... died for all, that
they which live should not live henceforth unto themselves.' That is
the great transformation. Secure that, and all nobleness will follow,
and 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report' will come, like
doves to their windows, flocking into the soul that has ceased to
find its centre in its poor rebellious self. All love derives its
power to elevate, refine, beautify, ennoble, conquer, from the fact
that, in lower degree, all love makes the beloved the centre, and not
the self. Hence the mother's self-sacrifice, hence the sweet
reciprocity of wedded life, hence everything in humanity that is
noble and good. Love is the antagonist of selfishness, and the
highest type of love should be, and in the measure in which we are
under the influence of Christ's love will be, the self-surrendering
life of a Christian man. I know that in saying so I am condemning
myself and my brethren. All the same, it is true. The one power that
rescues a man from the tyranny of living for self, which is the
mother of all sin and ignobleness, is when a man can say 'Christ is
my aim,' 'Christ is my object.' 'The life that I live in the flesh I
live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself
for me.' There is no secret of self-an