ngle at which the light falls on the mirror is the same as the
angle at which it is reflected from it. And though my love at its
highest is low, at its strongest is weak: yet, like the echo that is
faint and far, feeble though it be, it is pitched on the same key, and
is the prolongation of the same note as the mother-sound. So my love
answers God's love, and it will never answer it unless faith has brought
me within the auditorium, the circle wherein the voice that proclaims 'I
love thee, my child,' can be heard.

Now, we do not need to ask ourselves whether Paul is here speaking of
love to God or love to man. He is speaking of both, because the New
Testament deals with the latter as being a part of the former, and sure
to accompany it. But there is one lesson that I wish to draw. If it be
true that love in us is thus the result of faith in the love of God, let
us learn how we grow in love. You cannot say, 'Now I will make an effort
to love.' The circulation of the blood, the pulsations of the heart, are
not within the power of the will. But you can say, 'Now I will make an
effort to trust.' For faith is in the power of the will, and when the
Master said, 'Ye will not come unto me,' He taught us that unbelief is
not a mere intellectual deficiency or perversity, but that it is the
result, in the majority of cases--I might almost say in all-of an
alienated will. Therefore, if you wish to love, do not try to work
yourself into a hysteria of affection, but take into your hearts and
minds the Christian facts, and mainly the fact of the Cross, which will
set free the frozen and imprisoned fountains of your affections, and
cause them to flow out abundantly in sweet water. First faith, then
love; and get at love through faith. That is a piece of practical wisdom
that it will do us all good to keep in mind.

Then the third of the three, the topmost shoot, is hope. Hope is faith
directed to the future. So it is clear enough that, unless I have that
trust of which I have been speaking, I have none of the hope which the
Apostle regards as flowing from it. But love has to do with hope quite
as much, though in a different way, as faith has to do with it. For in
the direct proportion in which we are taking into our hearts Christ and
His truth, and letting our hearts go out in love towards Him and
communion with Him, will the glories beyond brighten and consolidate and
magnify themselves in our eyes. The hope of the Christian man is b