It is a first axiom in sound theology, that there is nothing good in man,
which was not first in God.

Now we all, I trust, hold God to be supremely good. We ascribe to Him,
in perfection, every kind of goodness of which we can conceive in man. We
say God is just; God is truthful; God is pure; God is bountiful; God is
merciful; and, in one word, God is Love.

God is Love. But if we say that, do we not say that God is good with a
fresh form of goodness, which is not justice, nor truthfulness, nor
purity, bounty, nor mercy, though without them--never forget that--it
cannot exist? And is not that fresh goodness, which we have not defined
yet, the very kind of goodness which we prize most in human beings? The
very kind of goodness which makes us prize and admire love, because
without it there is no true love, no love worth calling by that sacred
and heavenly name? And what is that?

What--save self-sacrifice? For what is the love worth which does not
shew itself in action; and more, which does not shew itself in Passion,
in the true sense of that word, which this week teaches us: namely, in
suffering? Not merely in acting for, but in daring, in struggling, in
grieving, in agonizing, and, if need be, in dying for, the object of its
love?

Every mother in this church will give but one answer to that question;
for mothers give it among the very animals; and the deer who fights for
her fawn, the bird who toils for her nestlings, the spider who will
rather die than drop her bag of eggs, know at least that love is not
worth calling love, unless it can dare and suffer for the thing it loves.
The most gracious of all virtues, therefore, is self-sacrifice; and is