made perfect. Show them, then, that human perfection is perfect love
for them, and can they fail to love it and themselves become perfect?
That is all. The mission of Christ and the salvation of men through Him
are as natural and as simple as the mother's caress of her child. Christ
came to earth because He loved men and could not help coming. Being on
earth, He expresses what is in Him--His love, His goodness. By His
loving all men and satisfying all their needs, men came to feel that
this was the Perfect One, and humbly gave themselves to Him. As simply
as love works in all human affairs and relationships, so simply does it
work here.

And God's method is as effectual as it is simple. Men do learn to love
Christ. And this love secures everything. As a bond between two persons,
nothing but love is to be depended upon. Love alone carries us out of
ourselves and makes other interests than our own dear to us.

But Christ requires us to love Him and invites us to consider whether we
do now love Him, because this love is an index to all that is in us of a
moral kind. There is so much implied in our love of Him, and so much
inextricably intertwined with it, that its presence or absence speaks
volumes regarding our whole inward condition. It is quite true that
nothing is more difficult to understand than the causes of love. It
seems to ally itself with equal readiness with pity and with admiration.
It is attracted sometimes by similarity of disposition, sometimes by
contrast. It is now stirred by gratitude and again by the conferring of
favours. Some persons whom we feel we ought to love we do not draw to.
Others who seem comparatively unattractive strongly draw us. But there
are always some persons in every society who are universally beloved;
and these are persons who are not only good, but whose goodness is
presented in an attractive form--who have some personal charm, in
appearance or manner or disposition. If some churlish person does not
own the ascendency, you know that the churlishness goes deep into the
character.

But this poorly illustrates the ascendency of Christ and what our
denial of it implies. His goodness is perfect and it is complete. Not to
love Him is not to love goodness; it is to be out of sympathy with what
attracts pure and loving spirits. For whatever be the apparent or
obscure causes of love, this is certain--that we love that which best
fits and stimulates our whole nature. Love lies deeper than