ast a passion
of love, a devotion so comprehensive, elevated, deliberate and
profound, has not elsewhere been in any degree approached save by some
of his imitators. And as love provokes love, many have found it possible
to conceive for Christ an attachment the closeness of which no words can
describe, a veneration so possessing and absorbing the man within them,
that they have said, "I live no more, but Christ lives in me." Now such
a feeling carries with it of necessity the feeling of love for all human
beings. It matters no longer what quality men may exhibit; amiable or
unamiable, as the brothers of Christ, as belonging to his sacred and
consecrated kind, as the objects of his love in life and death, they
must be dear to all to whom he is dear. And those who would for a moment
know his heart and understand his life must begin by thinking of the
whole race of man, and of each member of the race, with awful reverence
and hope.

Love, wheresoever it appears, is in its measure a law-making power.
"Love is _dutiful_ in thought and deed." And as the lover of his country
is free from the temptation to treason, so is he who loves Christ secure
from the temptation to injure any human being, whether it be himself or
another. He is indeed much more than this. He is bound and he is eager
to benefit and bless to the utmost of his power all that bear his
Master's nature, and that not merely with the good gifts of the earth,
but with whatever cherishes and trains best the Christ within them. But
for the present we are concerned merely with the power of this passion
to lift the man out of sin. The injuries he committed lightly when he
regarded his fellow-creatures simply as animals who added to the
fierceness of the brute an ingenuity and forethought that made them
doubly noxious, become horrible sacrilege when he sees in them no longer
the animal but the Christ. And that other class of crimes which belongs
more especially to ages of civilisation, and arises out of a cynical
contempt for the species, is rendered equally impossible to the man who
hears with reverence the announcement, "The good deeds you did to the
least of these my brethren you did to me."

There are two objections which may suggest themselves at this point, the
one to intellectual, the other to practical men. The intellectual man
may say, "To discover what it is right to do in any given case is not
the province of any feeling or passion however sublime, but requi