SUNDAY, December 3.  Meeting at the meetinghouse again.  I speak on 1 Peter 1:22.  TEXT.—­“See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.”

Scientific moralists teach that man’s love is his life.  They support this statement by what they regard a self-evident truth, that such as a man’s love is, such is his life.  The wide field for investigation to which this line of thought leads, presents many plausible arguments in favor of the doctrine they hold.  For one, I can and must confess that I have never been able to look deep enough into the human soul to find out just what the principle of life is.  Neither is it important that I should know.  But there is One that does know.  That One needs not that any should testify to him concerning man, for he knows what is in man.

Brethren, you all know to whom my thought now turns.  I mean our Lord Jesus Christ.  And let the life principle, the heart principle, the love principle be one and the same or not, it is he who says of men:  “By their fruits shall ye KNOW them;” not doubtfully, but surely.  The life record of every man, written not with pen and ink on paper, but with the finger of God on the tablet of his memory, will be the basis of his adjudgment to hell or his acquittal to heaven.  For “a good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things; likewise an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth evil things.”  “And they that have done good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life; but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”

Man is created for society.  He cannot be happy without it.  If it would be possible for us to conceive of a world inhabited by but one human being, with all hope of society forever banished, if that human being could ever think at all, it would only be to wish himself dead.  All our affections and thoughts are so intimately connected with the affections and thoughts of others as to derive all the zest of their enjoyment from this source alone.  We enjoy the pleasures of the table most when those we love enjoy them with us.  This feeling is so inwrought in the character that when any we specially love are absent, who we may fear are not faring as well as we, the reflection mars the relish of our food.  This is what should be.  But the length and breadth of social enjoyment is exactly commensurate with the length and breadth of social love.  The man whose heart is so small as to be able to take none but the members of his own family in the grasp of his contracted regard can have a meager enjoyment of life.  He is somewhat above a brute, but very far beneath the dignity of a man; and, worst of all, destitute of the spirit of Christ.  “He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” And this thought brings up my text:  “See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.”