"Love, The Fulfilling of the Law" Preached by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, 1869, Brooklyn, NY.
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“But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” —Matt., xxii., 34-40.
In this brief word Christ has drawn away the veil from the heart of God, and let us see its very central secret. It is love.
And since the days of Christ, the divine Helmsman has been steering the ship of human affairs right toward this light-house of the universe—Love; All that was recorded in the past or foreseen in the future pivoted on this one golden centre—Love.
I propose this morning, first, to examine the indisputable testimony of the Scripture on this doctrine of love; secondly, to ask what is included in this feeling; thirdly, to inquire what is the condition in which it is to exist in us; and fourthly, to consider its relations to the good work it does in the individual and in the world at large, and the methods of obtaining and cultivating it.
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| Rev. Henry Ward Beecher at Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, NY |
What is the Doctrine of Love?
Recall the words “Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” The law and the prophets are nothing without love; this is the sum, and includes them all.
Those who love all people are true followers of Christ. We perceive, then, that love, according to the plain interpretation of the Scripture, is put as a universal duty. It is the criterion and evidence of a regenerated state. It is the test of God's dwelling within our own soul. It is the end to which life should tend. It is the design and fulfillment of God's law. If a man will fulfill this simple requirement of the law he need not trouble himself about anything else.
Here is such a line of conduct marked out. There is no other road half so plain as this royal road of God. He has paved it, not with stones, but with gold; and he says to every man, “If you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself, there is no other law for you. In doing this you do all that is required of you.” Do I exaggerate, then, the importance of this emotion? Does not Scripture rank it as the chiefest among all the Christian states? Must not all other assumed tests of religion give place to this?
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| John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, “Love and the Maiden,” 1877 |
What is in Love?
Secondly, let us look at the question of, What is included in this love? God has made in the human soul a threefold provision for the exercise of affection. The first is love, which takes hold of youth, and infancy, and weakness, and which is peculiarly designed to meet the exigency of birth and childhood. No other form of love can meet that want so well as the instinct of maternal love.
The patience, the watchfulness, and the tenderness required for helpless infancy must have a special instinct scarcely at all depending upon reflection. This is given to all animals. It inspires gentleness in the lioness and the tigress. The she-wolf licks her whelps with loving, amiable kindness, and seems half human. The second form of love is higher and wider than maternal love. It may be denominated personal affection. It is that love which exists between two persons of congenial disposition. It depends upon character.
But, though it is a glorious attribute, unknown in the brute creation below us, it is limited. It may exist in men without very high moral quality. Indeed, there are very many exceedingly selfish persons that love intensely; The third and highest form of love is that disposition which is usually called benevolence, and which consists in good-will, a spirit of active kindness, and affection to all men, without regard to their character. Ordinary affection takes heed to character, and we love men in proportion as they come up to our ideas of human life.
Personal love always works upward; but benevolence, or that love which is characterized by good-will and compassion, works also downward. To these three forms of affection I must not fail to add a capacity for a higher love than this social faculty, by which we are able to develop out of ourselves a true love for that which is invisible, supreme and perfect—the ideal religious love. This capacity, and the three kinds of affection which I have just described, form the constitutional elements in the soul by which we are to love.
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| A Newly Freed Light skin Slave Girl gazes at a Ring - Eastman Johnson, The Freedom Ring (1860) |
How Does Love Exist Within Us?
Thirdly, what is the condition in which this state of mind is to exist? We are conscious that our feelings exist in a twofold way-first, as impulses, and, second, as dispositions ; and it is important to discriminate between these. The former are occasional, the latter are permanent.
Now in which of these two ways is love to exist in the mind? Is it to be an occasional emotion or an abiding state?
These are illustrations drawn from common life, since I am speaking to the common people, to show what I mean by a state or disposition, in distinction from a special volition. And the question is this: What is the command of God in respect to the matter of love? Is it to be an occasional impulse? Are we, when the Sabbath day comes, to take out our heart, and select from it love as an arrow, and let it fly at the target in the sanctuary, and say, “There, my shaft has sped; I have done my duty to-day;” or is it to be the continual experience of our life? Is it to be an impulse provoked by occasion and necessity? or is it to be an abiding state lying behind all the activities of our nature, propelling and directing them? Love is to take precedence of all our other feelings. It is to be the chief element of our life. It is to be our meat and drink. The great commandment of the law is, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and”—there is not a great gulf between the two parts, but only room to take breath—“and thy neighbor as thyself.” They come together as twins. And this is to be the power and scope of the love we are to have; it is to be a love that fills the head, and the heart, and the nature, and the life.
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| Slave Soldier and Companion, c.1861-65 |
What are the Benefits of Love?
Fourthly, I am to ask your attention to the relations of this disposition of love to the work of Christianity in the individual and in the world. Love is itself a perfect thing. No other feeling is. Each feeling of our nature must be gilded by it before it has its proper hue and quality. We discover God by the reproduction of him in ourselves—by shaping in ourselves something that is like him. Hence Christ said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The body will never see God. We are to see him by our dispositions, by our affections.
We are to carry ourselves toward all men in such a way that we shall love them and wish them well—toward all men; not merely toward our friends, not toward the noble and excellent alone, but also toward the poor, toward the rude, toward the vulgar, toward the child, toward the man, toward the stranger, toward the white, toward the black, toward every human being that God has created, toward every sentient creature that is conscious of happiness, and that is capable of being improved and made better.
When a man stands so suffused with this disposition that every day and hour his heart is filled with yearning feelings of goodwill toward his fellow-men, he is, in some measure, in that abiding state in which God dwells.
If God gives someone the graces of the Spirit, he gives them to her by augmenting his love; and when someone prays for good graces, let her pray that she may have a larger measure of this disposition.
If someone does the things that she has to do in any other spirit than that of love, they are irksome tasks; but if she does them in a spirit of love, how her face laughs! how her hand tingles! how radiant is every part of her life!
Think of the things a mother does for her child. She gives it her life. She can not serve it enough. To her there is nothing but "My babe.” It is her joy, her pleasure, night and day. There are offices that she has to perform toward it that are disagreeable for the moment, but her love for it enables her to perform them with willingness, and to forget all connected with them which is unpleasant. And thus are fulfilled the words of Christ when he says “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Love, and love enough, and your burdens will not seem heavy. Love is able to steer you over all difficulties. Employ it, and it will carry you through life with power adequate to your exigencies. He that knows how to love much knows everything. I ask your attention also to the relation of this disposition of love to your treatment of your fellow-men. No man can form right moral judgments about his fellow-men until he does it in a spirit of love.
Before you can form a right judgment of a man, you must love him. Love is the true and only evidence of piety.
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| Eunice Beecher, Henry Ward Beecher's Wife at his Death Bed - 1887 |