a
'pure heart.' These come from 'unfeigned faith,' which lies higher up in
the hills of God; and they run down into the love which is the 'end of
the commandment.' The faith lays hold on the commandment, and so the
process is complete. Or, if you begin at the top, instead of at the
bottom, God gives the word; faith grasps the word, and thereby nourishes
a 'pure heart' and a 'good conscience,' and thereby produces a universal
love. So, then, we have three steps to look at here.

I. First of all, what God speaks to us for.

'The end of the commandment is love.'

Now, I take it that the word 'commandment' here means, not this or that
specific precept, but the whole body of Christian revelation, considered
as containing laws for life. And to begin with, and only to mention, it
is something to get that point of view, that all which God says, be it
promise, be it self-manifestation, be it threatening, or be it anything
else, has a preceptive bearing, and is meant to influence life and
conduct. I shall have a word or two more to say about that presently,
but note, just as we go on, how remarkable it is, and how full of
lessons, if we will ponder it, that one name for the Gospel on the lips
of the man who had most to say about the contrast between Gospel and
Law is 'commandment.' Try to feel the stringency of that aspect of
evangelical truth and of Christian revelation.

Then I need not remind you how here the indefinite expression 'love'
must be taken, as I think is generally the case in the New Testament,
when the object on which the love rests is not defined, as including
both of the twin commandments, of which the second, our Master says, is
like unto the first, love to God and love to man. In the Christian idea
these two are one. They are shoots from the one root. The only
difference is that the one climbs and the other grows along the levels
of earth. There is no gulf set in the New Testament teaching, and there
ought to be none in the practice and life of a Christian man, between
the love of God and the love of man. They are two aspects of one thing.

Then, if so, mark how, according to the Apostle's teaching here, in this
one thought of a dual-sided love, one turned upwards, one turned
earthwards, there lies the whole perfection of a human soul. You want
nothing more if you are 'rooted and grounded in love.' That will secure
all goodness, all morality, all religion, everything that is beautiful,
and everything tha