revelation of an obligation, but the communication of power to fulfil
it. The novelty of Christian morality lies here, that in its law
there is a self-fulfilling force. We have not to look to one place
for the knowledge of our duty, and somewhere else for the strength to
do it, but both are given to us in the one thing, the gift of the
dying Christ and His immortal love.

That love, received into our hearts, will conquer, and it alone will
conquer, our selfishness. That love, received into our hearts, will
mould, and it alone will mould, them into its own likeness. That
love, received into our hearts, will knit, and it alone will knit,
all those who participate in it into a common bond, sweet, deep,
sacred, and all-victorious.

And so, brethren, if we would know the blessedness and the sweetness
of victory over these miserable, selfish hearts of ours, and to walk
in the liberty of love, we can only get it by keeping close to Jesus
Christ. In any circle, the nearer the points of the circumference are
to the centre, the closer they will necessarily be to one another. As
we draw nearer, each for himself, to our Centre, we shall feel that
we have approximated to all those who stand round the same centre,
and draw from it the same life. In the early spring, when the wheat
is green and young, and scarcely appears above the ground, it comes
up in the lines in which it was sown, parted from one another and
distinctly showing their separation and the furrows. But when the
full corn in the ear waves on the autumn plain, all the lines and
separations have disappeared, and there is one unbroken tract of
sunny fruitfulness. And so when the life in Christ is low and feeble,
His servants may be separated and drawn up in rigid lines of
denominations, and churches, and sects; but as they grow the lines