loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay
down his life for his friends.'--JOHN xv. 12, 13.

The union between Christ and His disciples has been tenderly set
forth in the parable of the Vine and the branches. We now turn to the
union between the disciples, which is the consequence of their common
union to the Lord. The branches are parts of one whole, and
necessarily bear a relation to each other. We may modify for our
present purpose the analogous statement of the Apostle in reference
to the Lord's Supper, and as He says, 'We being many, are one body,
for we are all partakers of that one bread,' so we may say--The
branches, being many, are one Vine, for they are all partakers of
that one Vine. Of this union amongst the branches, which results from
their common inherence in the Vine, the natural expression and
manifestation is the mutual love, which Christ here gives as _the_
commandment, and commends to us all by His own solemn example.

There are four things suggested to me by the words of our text--the
Obligation, the Sufficiency, the Pattern, and the Motive, of
Christian love.

I. First, the Obligation of love.

The two ideas of commandment and love do not go well together. You
cannot pump up love to order, and if you try you generally produce,
what we see in abundance in the world and in the Church, sentimental
hypocrisy, hollow and unreal. But whilst that is true, and whilst it
seems strange to say that we are commanded to love, still we can do a
great deal, directly and indirectly, for the cultivation and
strengthening of any emotion. We can either cast ourselves into the