THE NEW COMMANDMENT.

SEVEN times in the course of the Sermon before the Cross, Jesus repeated the commandment of Love, and as may times more, solemnly, in the name of His own Love, enjoined obedience to His commandment. We shall do well gravely to consider the meaning of that word "Love."

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One thing is certain to begin with: We shall altogether miss Jesus's meaning if we substitute for His word, the word "respect,' say, or "tolerate. It is equally certain that we shall fail to apprehend Him if we read love" as if it were synonymous with "like." I do not suggest the possibility of this confusion because it is one into which schoolgirls fall, but because I believe that while most of us, through verbal instinct, use the words with substantial accuracy, the distinction between them is not clear in our minds, and because I believe that that distinction is an essential one. It is not, of course, a matter of degree; Love is more

than a great liking. Neither is it true that loving is restricted to animate objects, while liking need not be-a common notion of the distinction. We may, we should, love our Country, love Truth and Beauty and Justice all inanimate objects incapable of making response. The distinction, I feel sure, is this: In liking, we think of a thing as valuable to us; in loving, we think of ourselves as valuable to it. Liking is egoistic; Love is altruistic. We like for our own sake; we love for the other's sake. We like a thing when it gives us pleasure; we love a thing when we desire to give to it pleasure or service or advantage; when our self ceases to be the centre of thought, and becomes as nothing becomes a thing to be freely offered, a casket to be broken and poured out upon the head of the object of our love. Love is sacrifice unconscious of itself; the complete giving, the absolute surrender. It is a streaming outward of the inmost treasures of the spirit, a consecration of its best activities to the welfare of another.5 Love is a spendthrift, magnificent in its recklessness, squandering the very essence of the

self upon its object, and by so doing enriching the self beyond all measure. For in loving, the individual becomes reimpersonated in another; indeed, becomes what in isolation he was not-a person. In giving, he gains, himself; in losing, finds; in spending, receives, himself. It is forever true that he alone comes into possession of himself who pours himself out in love; that whosoever shall seek to gain (epinоLnoaobar) his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life shall bring it to a new birth (woyovnoεi). He who giveth his life to a son shall receive it as a Father; he who loseth his life in that of his country shall find his life as a Citizen; he who layeth down his life in service for men shall take it up as a Man. For what is a Man but the sum of his sacrifices? Here is a creature who will make none; he says to himself: "I will decline all relationships. I won't take the trouble to be a Citizen. I won't be a Husband nor a Brother nor a Son. I refuse to be anyone's Friend. Let no man

call me Employer or Partner.

I will wrap

myself in my own personality, and give

nothing of myself to others." What has he done? What is he? He is nothing, and has not a name. He has not found, but lost, himself. For to be neither Father, Son, Husband, Friend, Neighbour, Employer, nor Citizen, is to be-just nothing. You can give no description of such a being. He is not a Man, for manhood is attained just in the relationships,—the sacrifices, which he has declined. What we see upon the street is not a Man, but only the centre around which cluster the relationships which constitute the Man. Would you be a Man, in the fulness of its meaning? Take up the relationships of life. Give yourself, and find yourself. Freely pour out your choicest possessions, and discover that returning tides bring richer ones. Enter into the fellowship of sacrifice.

St. John is merely making a scientific statement when he says that he who loveth not his brother abideth in death. The sacrifice of love thus is a blessing not alone for its object, but to him who sacrifices; it makes sorrow itself, and deprivation and loss and shame, lyric with joy. In the camp of Israel