the unconquerable desire to bless and to redeem, which is deepest, towards us, in the heart of God our Father.

Therefore, in this illimitable demand for Love upon us, we are greatly blessed. We are placed in the infinite, and kept in the infinite; we are freed from definitions of love, from maxims of forgiveness, from all the foolish casuistry that limits love. In this, at least, we are not to be content with our limitations. There are no limitations. We are challenged by God Himself to share in His infinity; never to endure finality in tenderness, never to imagine the end of love. It is a glorious call, and to answer it brings us into the infinite God Himself. "Walk worthy, then, of the vocation wherein ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love."

Infinite in measure, this Law of Love is also universal in application. Life has varied circumstances, but this law fits them all. It divides itself into different streams to water different fields of human needs, but the source of all the streams is one.

Try it in a few cases. We have our failings, and half the quarrels and unhappiness of man arise from our finding out and magnifying our neighbour's failings into sins, sometimes into crimes. We are vain of our detective powers, and proclaim

our discoveries, and out of that vain glory leap forth strife and anger, war and sorrow. What says

the Law of Love? "Charity covereth a multitude of sins."

Even when we have not faults, we have peculiarities of temperament, twisted moods, turns of manner, which disturb our home and our friends. If because of the originality of these things we emphasize them in ourselves so as to jar with others, or if, being jarred by them in others, we increase, by ceaselessly objecting to them, the desire of others to emphasize them, we double the materials of unkindly strife. Then steps in another form of the law of love to make our peace-" Forbearing one another in love."

We do wrong to others, or we are wronged. Being wronged, we stand on our rights, and demand submission. Foolish people! that is not the way to victory! The true conquest is to win the heart of those who have done you wrong. Or, we are too proud to ask pardon for the injury we have done. We wish for our revenge, and wait for it, and an uneasy place within stings till we have got it. "Thou shalt not," we say to our injurer, “come out into forgiveness, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing." Or, having done the wrong, we do not forgive ourselves, but impute

the pain of conscience that we suffer to the person we have wronged, and picture him as our enemy, and finally come to hate him. We will not forgive him, lest we should seem to confess our wrong— a common commonplace of human nature-until, on both sides, the vain and miserable strife is deepened; and the foolishness of vengeance becomes the poisonous food of life. Then it were happiness indeed, if we could hear among the jarring brass of this vile war, the music of the Law of Love" Forgiving one another, even as God has forgiven you."

These are a few of the modes of the motion of love, a few of the active forces of its one energy, a few of the ways in which it conditions itself, as it passes through circumstances, into varied powers. Of one of these especially I now speak. It is yet another of these modes of love, and it is laid down in the words of the text, "Bear ye one another's burdens."

That law is founded on the necessities of our human nature. It is not necessary to obey it because it is commanded; it is commanded because it is necessary. It fits into the wants of man. For we are all dependent on one another. As in our body each organ lives for itself only in living for the rest, as each part, nay, each atom

of our frame supplements the wants of the others, gives and receives, bears and forbears, dies and lives alternately for the life of the whole-so is it in the whole of the ever living body of humanity. The life of each nation, each society, each man, depends on the mutual giving and receiving, dying and living, bearing and forbearing of all the rest. The moment, then, through selfishness of life, we divide ourselves from this living and dying for others, the moment we isolate ourselves, we pronounce our own sentence of death. The absolute loss of love is eternal death, as its absolute gain is eternal life. It was that which Christ Jesus saw; it was that he proclaimed on Calvary. And it is the law of the life of the universe, "Bear, therefore, one another's burdens, and so fulfil the Law of Love."

What are these burdens? There are those we lay upon ourselves: sin, anxiety, discontent, morbid feeling, the result of imprudence or of violation of Nature-these, I leave aside, for they are frequent subjects in this connection. But there are other burdens which men do not make themselves, but which are laid upon them. It is true they take most of their oppressiveness from the temper in which they are met, and the way in which men bear them; but still, those who bear them did not

always cause them. Some men are born with them on their shoulders. When you see men bending beneath them, stretch out your hands, take half of them, take all you can on to your own shoulders.

Two of such burdens are the burden of sorrow and the burden of joy. Our faithful obeying of this law of Love helps us to lighten these, for it is only love that can take away the overcoming of one, and the overwhelming of the other. By giving of sympathy you take away the worst of the weight of sorrow. You cannot take it all away, but you can lift off that in it which maims the life or slays the soul, if you love enough. Unloving sympathy has no tact, no inventiveness, no insight, no reverence. But the sympathy of love-and that you are bound to win, if you would obey this law-enters into the sanctuary of another's sorrow with uncovered head and reverent stillness, sees the point where tenderness can touch and not hurt, has quickness of imagination to invent the means. of bearing away the burden; rescues the sufferers before they are conscious of being rescued, and wins undying love. There is no happiness in life so delicate and pure as the doing of this beautiful thing. It is the happiness of God Himself.

But the man who sorrows has also his duty

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