Terror can not persuade those who have no hope, and desperation is beyond the influence of fear. The doctrines of the New Covenant are terrible to impenitence, but inviting as light to the repentant. Eternity offers nothing to be hoped without faith, and therefore there is no room for presuming on a salvation if not sought now; for hope is a present and praying principle. He who fears God is afraid of nothing but sin, because he knows that nothing else can injure him. Thus Luther said, "Let them threaten me with death, with torture and the stake-what is all this to me? It makes no impression on me. It is the merest trifle to the agony I endured in my religious life before I found a Saviour."

CHAPTER XIII.

LOVE.

FAITH is the test of love, and love is the test of faith. We can not believe and love, but because faithfulness and love are manifest in deed. Thus our Father in heaven never calls upon us to endure, as seeing him who is invisible, until he has demonstrated his claim upon our hearts. He gives us occasion to trust when he has taught us to love; but only that faith and love, growing together, may find a fuller bliss in further evidence of His favor.

ven.

If then you would train a child aright, imitate HeaAbove all things make him believe you, because he has reason to love you. Let him feel and hear and fear your authority, because you obey and are bound to obey-God. Let him know who holds the absolute right to rule without being doubted; and that as Christ has commanded you to train the child for Him, you do so because the source of power is the source of good. A child needs not much reasoning; he is convinced intuitively. Let him feel that you have right, by feeling that you are right. But when that child begins to say, "why?" know that fallen reason is urging it to further exercise of faith and love; therefore answer it in the language given you by God, for if that child's soul be not thus met with admonition, godly nurture, and instruction, it will speedily obtain delusive answers for itself in false desire and fearful credency. Good education is the training of the mind to good feeling the communication of intelligence in love and faithfulness-in short, religion: but bad education is whatever induces a mind to distrust others rather

than itself, and sets it selfishly at work to find satisfaction in knowledge without love, in facts without faith, in dependence on the senses for sufficiency rather than on God.

Love, itself may abuse power. Howard was, as a philanthropist, a blessing to the world, but, as a father, however affectionate, he seems to have been unwise; a mistaken sense of duty caused him to pierce his own heart. He thought it his duty to insist on obedience merely on the authority of parental power, instead of enforcing it by the attractiveness of fatherly feeling and consistency. Natural faith and affection are not blind, but well able to distinguish their proper objects. He taught his child, while still an infant, not to cry, and never in all its childhood permitted it to have what it demanded with tears! God forbid that our Father in heaven should thus treat us. He expects us to be in earnest. But, said Howard, the government of a being that can not reason a bout the fitness of things should be only coercive and in fear. He overlooked the discernment that is keener than reason; he forgot that the heart has to be educated as well as the head, and that it is ruled aright only as long as love is visible in power. A child that must always govern its feelings, from fear of others, will soon be a hypocrite and a tyrant. When the fetters upon it are removed, the soul will rush into selfish extravagance. and, perhaps, perish; like a bird from a cage, unfit to use its wings, and aiming only at pleasure, while incapable of providing for its own wants. Thus Howard's son was in infancy coerced, without fondness; in youth, commanded to be moral; in manhood, became debauched, and then mad.

If a man's heart be governed by love for God, he may trust to its naturalness for the proper expression of that love in all his relationships. It is, however, very easy to say that we love God, and yet deceive ourselves.

We can not love Him without loving holiness and hating evil. But we know neither what is evil nor what is holy, until taught of God to estimate the loveliness of his own character. We must see the beauty of holiness, before we can desire to be holy; and this we learn from the fact, that every doctrine that is divine begins and ends in love. If God were not Love, how should we have thought that was His name? An evil spirit never suggested that word. God must have revealed Himself ere we could have believed it. There is no Almighty Love among the worshipers of evil spirits—they tremble in their idolatries, and know nothing of a power to cast out fear. Nor should we have found a way out of torment, had not God himself come to dwell in humanity among us. To know the true God and eternal life, is to know Him whom God has sent. If, then, we would govern rightly either the passions of others or our own, we must evince the divine life as a power utterly opposed to all evil, and bound to resist it even unto death, and make ourselves a sacrifice rather than resign that which alone is really life.

The law of love is the law of liberty. Supposing we were at liberty to choose our own pleasures, should we decide on self-denial, as the beginning of bliss? If the care of oneself is virtue, as we are taught by some who treat largely of our moral constitution on physical principles, then, of course, self-denial is foolishness. But mere self is not the main motive any where in nature. Love is stronger than death; and love is the law of Heaven, written in the hearts of all creatures. From the lowest impulse of natural instinct up to that of the highest angel, the sense of others absorbs that of self; and all happiness is found in that intensity of feeling that blends self-consciousness so completely with the sense of some beloved being, as to render them but one. Even among the lower animals, the

love of offspring is mightier than that of self-preservation. That is a beautiful but yet common kind of fact which Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, relates.“ We had one very bad winter, so that our sheep grew lean, and disease carried off many. Often have I seen these poor victims, when fallen down to rise no more, and even when unable to lift their heads from the ground, holding up the leg, to invite the starving lamb to the miserable pittance that the udder could still supply." How many a human parent endures the bitterness of this world with heroic front for the sake of his little ones, but for whom he would prefer to hide himself and die! Thus, by love, our Maker provides for our spiritual progress, amidst the trials of our affections, and if we know Him, enables us, in their very agony, to approach most nearly to Himself, in the apprehension of His charity who heads the army of faithful sufferers, and will ultimately lead them, triumphant over self, to that home of rest where excellence shall no more need denial, but where intelligence, effort, and experience, shall completely, and forever, harmonize with love. 66 Endure, as seeing Him who is invisible." Tribulation is the channel of blessing. Love mingles its virtue with the troubled waters, and a weak man, who enters them with faith, grows strong in soul as he struggles with the wave that would otherwise overwhelm him. He breasts it, and rises above it, and returns to the work of life no longer impotent. But it is He who asked the man if he would be healed, and who touched him, and said, "Go-sin no more," that must be still the healer. It is only from a consciousness of what He is to us, as the Saviour, that we can fulfill the duty of bearing trouble, and walk in the dignity of a citizen of heaven. "Endure as seeing Him who is invisible." Where is the man with a heart that would call that woman unhappy who should lose her own life in rescuing her child from the flames? or