Matthew xxii. 27.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
These words often puzzle and pain really good people,
because they seem to put the hardest duty first.
It seems, at times, so much more easy to love one’s
neighbour than to love God. And strange as it
may seem, that is partly true. St. John tells
us so—’He that loves not his brother
whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath
not seen?’ Therefore many good people, who
really do love God, are unhappy at times because they
feel that they do not love him enough. They say
in their hearts—’I wish to do right,
and I try to do it: but I am afraid I do not
do it from love to God.’
I think that they are often too hard upon themselves.
I believe that they are very often loving God with
their whole hearts, when they think that they are
not doing so. But still, it is well to be afraid
of oneself, and dissatisfied with oneself.
I think, too—nay, I am certain—that
many good people do not love God as they ought, and
as they would wish to do, because they have not been
rightly taught who God is, and what He is like.
They have not been taught that God is loveable; they
have been taught that God feels feelings, and does
deeds, which if a man felt, or did, we should call
him arbitrary, proud, revengeful, cruel: and
yet they are told to love him; and they do not know
how to love such a being as that. Nor do I either,
my friends.
Let us therefore think over to-day for ourselves why
we ought to love God; and why both Bible and Catechism
bid child as well as man to love the Lord our God
with all our hearts, souls, and minds, before they
bid us love our neighbours. And keep this in
mind all through, that the reason why we are to love
God must depend upon what God’s character is.
For you cannot love any one because you are told to
love them. You can only love them because they
are loveable and worthy of your love. And that
they will not be, unless they are loving themselves;
as it is written, we love God because he first loved
us.
Now, friends, look at this one thing first.
When we see any man do a just action, or a kind action,
do we not like to see it? Do we not like the
man the better for doing it? A man must be sunk
very low in stupidity and ill-feeling—dead
in tresspasses and sins, as the Bible calls it—if
he does not. Indeed, I never saw the man yet,
however bad he was himself, who did not, in his better
moments, admire what was right and good; and say,
’Bad as I may be, that man is a good man, and
I wish I could do as he does.’
One sees the same, but far more strongly, in little
children. From their earliest years, as far
as I have ever seen, children like and admire what
is good, even though they be naughty themselves; and
if you tell them of any very loving, generous, or
brave action, their hearts leap up in answer to it.
They feel at once how beautiful goodness is.
