etion and guardian of love itself. There is
always danger that love shall weaken the condemnation of wrong, and
modern liberality, both in the field of opinion and in regard to
practical life, has so far condoned evil as largely to have lost its
hold upon good. The criminal is pitied rather than blamed, and a
multitude of agencies are so occupied in elevating the wrong-doers
that they lose sight of the need of punishing.

Nor is it only in reference to society that this tendency works harm.
The effect of it is abundantly manifest in the fashionable ideas of
God and His character. There are whole schools of opinion which
practically strike out of their ideal of the Divine Nature abhorrence
of evil, and, little as they think it, are thereby fatally
impoverishing their ideal of God, and making it impossible to
understand His government of the world. As always, so in this matter,
the authentic revelation of the Divine Nature, and the perfect
pattern for the human are to be found in Jesus Christ. We recall that
wonderful incident, when on His last approach to Jerusalem, rounding
the shoulder of the Mount of Olives, He beheld the city, gleaming in
the morning sunshine across the valley, and forgetting His own
sorrow, shed tears over its approaching desolation, which yet He
steadfastly pronounced. His loathing of evil was whole-souled and
absolute, and equally intense and complete was His cleaving to that
which is good. In both, and in the harmony between them, He makes God
known, and prescribes and holds forth the ideal of perfect humanity
to men.

III. Let sincere and discriminating love be concentrated on Christian
men.

In the final exhortation of our text 'the love of the brethren' takes
the place of the more diffused and general love enjoined in the first
clause. The expression 'kindly affectioned' is the rendering of a
very eloquent word in the original in which the instinctive love of a
mother to her child, or the strange mystical ties which unite members
of a family together, irrespective of their differences of character
and temperament, are taken as an example after which Christian men
are to mould their relations to one another. The love which is
without hypocrisy, and is to be diffused on all sides, is also to be
gathered together and concentrated with special energy on all who
'call upon Jesus Christ as Lord, both their Lord and ours.' The more
general precept and the more particular are in perfect harmony,