THE HOLY SPIRIT FLOODING THE SOUL WITH LOVE.

The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us. Rom. 5 15.

1. The supreme element in Christian character is love. It has always been so. Moses commanded, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul and with all thy might and with all thy strength/' Jesus endorsed Moses and went beyond him in the law of love, saying, “I say unto you love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you/' Paul said to the Romans, “Owe no man anything but to love one another." He said to the Galatians, “The fruit of the Spirit is love to the Phillipians, “This I pray that your love may abound yet more and more"; to the Col., “Put on love which is the bond of perfectness"; to the Thessalonians, “Ye are all taught of God to love one another;" to Timothy he said, “The end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart." Peter says, “See that you love one another with a pure heart fervent!y.” James says, “If ye fulfill the royal law of love you do well.” Jude says, “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” John says, “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God dwelleth in him.”

2. The cause of failure in every Christian is the lack of love. Every fall, every sin and every ship wreck in the Christian life is caused by the lack of love. Is there a lack of service on our part, it is because the love of Christ does not constrain us. Is there a lack of obedience, it is caused by a lack of love, for if a man loves Me he will keep My commandments. Have you covetousness, it is because of the lack of love. For “whoso hath this world’s goods and seeth his brother in need and shutteth up his compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him.” The little Christian church at Antioch supported fifteen hundred in ligent people every year. Are you fearful, it is because there is a lack of love, for perfect love casteth out fear. Are you conceited; that also is from a lack of love, for love vaunteth not itself. Do you speak evil of others; that is another lack of love, for love taketh no account of evil. Are you envious; love envieth not. Are you angry; love is not provoked. Have you unbelief; love believeth all things. Have you pride in the heart; love is not puffed up. Have you rudeness in conduct; love does not behave itself unseemly. Are you selfish; love seeketh not her own. Are you discouraged; love endureth all things. Do you sin against your neighbor; love worketh no ill to the neighbor. Are you often defeated; love never faileth. So you see that every break down is caused by a lack of love. No wonder Jude said, “Keep yourselves in the love gf God.”

3. How then do we get this love of God in the soul? There is no love for God in the carnal mind. No, not one particle, for the carnal mind is enmity against God. Neither is it subject to the law of God. It is hard for us to believe this. We love the carnal mind. We cultivate its qualities. We wash its face, comb its hair, put it in a rocking chair and smile at it, but when God throws light upon it — lo it is a corpse, dead in trespasses and sin. To be carnally minded is death. There is no love for a mother in a dead son or daughter. A dead child never gave a loving mother a rose, smiled in her face, spoke a kind word or kissed away a tear. We do not hate the dead child because it does not do these things, but we are dreadfully sorry and would pour out our life’s blood to have the child restored to life, and

that is exactly what God has done for this lost world. The life and love of God had gone out of us and death, the intruder, had come in, and so we were all dead in trespasses and sins, without hope and without love for God.

4. In regeneration new life is imparted and a new spirit is given to the penitent believer. The soul is raised from the dead. You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins. Then sin does not have dominion over you. The power of sin is broken. The love of sin is controlled. The carnal desires, envy, pride, malice, hatred, jealousy, deceit and hypocrisy are subdued and kept under. The Old Man is bound. “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.” Some good people think they can control that evil heart. A famous doctor in M., thought he did not need to have the carnal mind cast out. He lived in a fine home. He entertained the officers of the church and the Bishops, when they came in that part of the state. He was sent twice as a delegate to the General Conference, but alas, his covetousness betrayed his evil heart of unbelief, and he was found guilty by the Grand Jury on thirty r three counts and has been sent to the penitentiary. A father in Kentucky thought he could control his anger, but when his little boy cried because he didn’t give him a toy wagon or a wheel barrow he struck him with his hand on the side of the head and knocked him against a plow point. The next morning the doctor said, 'This little boy has concussion of the brain and' he must die,” and the father has nearly gone insane.

5. When the believer consecrates himself utterly and forever to God, then God sheds His love abroad in his heart. This is what every Methodist preacher in the world has accepted as his faith. For when preachers are admitted into the conferences they are asked these questions: "Have you saving faith in our Lord Jesus Christ? Are you going on to perfection? Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life? Are you earnestly seeking after it?” and to all these questions he must give an affirmative answer. And whenever he gets this grace, then love is shed abroad in his heart, the Old Man is cast out, the will power, the mental and the emotional power are united for God.

6. This love of God always increases as we abide in it. You cannot increase love by resolving to love more than you do now. You cannot move a boat forward by pressing it from within, as the force with which you press on is exactly equal to that with which you press back. You push backward exactly as much as you push forward. The reaction is equal to the action. Now there are persons who try to increase love by self reproach. They try to warm their hearts by high resolves and hot words, but there is always a relapse in that kind of an increase because it is artificial. Love is an inspiration coming from without, and is not produced from within ourselves. The power to evolve the elements of love must come from God. Out there in the grove there are a thousand spring beauties. They have been under the soil, around the trunks of living trees or old stumps or uncomely stones. These troops of wild flowers cannot lift themselves up or open their petals or paint their blossoms and leaves with beautiful colors. They need not covet that power. The sun has the power to do that and that faithful friend will not forget the flowers and the daisies. He’s coming already from the South. The lengthening days mark his approaching footsteps. He is reaching out his arms of light and warmth, saying to all these roots and bulbs, “Come forth,” and every flower is beginning to rejoice and adorn itself with beauty. The only way to increase the divine love in us is to abide in His love. God never forgets to touch the heart with the sceptre of divine love. If we will abide in his love as the flower abides in the sunlight, we will soon be like the garden of the Lord, for this is the eternal truth of Christ’s gospel through all ages. We love Him because He first loved us.

7. If love is shed abroad in our hearts it will produce humility. Did you ever notice the reason Christ gave for learning of Him,? He might have said, “Lean Me because I am the most advanced thinker of the age, I am the great miracle worker of the world,” but the great reason He gave, was that He was meek and lowly in heart. There are three men in Scripture whose faces shone and all three are noted for their humility. Moses, after he had been on the Mount for forty days, came down from his communion with God with a shining face, and Moses was a humble man. When Stephen stood before the Sanhedrin on the day of his death his face was lighted up with glory. When the meek and lowly Jesus stood on the mount of transfiguration His face shone like the brightness of the sun. If ever our faces are to shine we must get down into the valley of humility. When a man's soul is flooded with love there is no patronage in his smile, no condescension in his nod, no recital of self achievements for his own glorification, no craving the uppermost seats or scrambling for the chief places in the synagogue. When I was a boy at home on the farm, we were accustomed to go out into the fields, at harvest time in search of large heads of wheat. At first we went to the tall stocks with long heads that stood erect and alone by the stump or where log heaps had been burned, but we soon learned that these tall high headed wheat heads had nothing but chaff and were good for nothing; but the heads that bent over were full of good wheat, perfect, plump and full. I have also learned that in the Christian harvest field whenever heads are exalted and are bristling and bossy, that the wheat is scarce, the mildew and the blast have fallen upon them and they are mostly chaff which the wind carries away.

8. If love is shed abroad in our hearts we will endure to the end. Love never faileth. Love endureth all things. Let us see the endurance of divine love in the revelation of Jesus Christ. We turn our faces from Him and say there is no beauty in Him that we should admire Him. We will not have Him to reign over us, but still He loves us. We find Him guilty when He was not guilty. We mock Him with Herod’s robe and smite Him in the face with our hands, but still He loves us. We scourge His back with a lash, we put the cross on His shoulder; we tear His brow with a crown of thorns, but still He loves us; we pierce His hands and feet with cruel nails; we put the bitterest cup of gall to His lips, but still He loves us and cries out to the Father for the forgiveness of all His enemies. His heart is love. Nothing but inextinguishable, unconquerable, everlasting love. “Oh, for such love let rocks and hills their lasting silence break, and all harmonious human tongues the Savior’s praises speak.” This divine love in us never changes, never gives up and never breaks down. It is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. It is the flame that cannot be quenched. The foot that never wearies. The hand that never tires. The heart that never ceases to throb. If we keep ourselves in the love of God we will endure forever for who shall separate us from the love of Christ. “Shall tribulation or distress, persecution or famine, nakedness or peril of sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us;” “For I am pursuaded that neither death nor life, angels, principalities or powers, things present or things to come, height or depth or any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” If you have allowed tribulation or distress, trouble or persecution to break you down, fling yourselves out in the love of God and let God save you.

9. If love is shed abroad in our hearts it will be manifested. The love of God voluntarily manifested itself to us. It was not forced out, but it came of its own explosive power. We did not stand up in our misery and pray and plead with God to send us help and deliverance, but God so loved the world as to give His only begotten Son to die, that whosoever believed in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life, and now God commends His love unto us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. The great evidence of love in our hearts is found in our manifestation of love towards others. If love to man is wanting, so is the love of God in us. If love to man is weak and wavering so is the love of God in us. If love to man in us is deep and all consuming, so is the love of God in us. John comes in here with a sledge hammer declaration so that we will never forget it and says, “If any man says he loves God whom he has not seen and hateth his brother whom he has seen he is a liar” he does not love God at all. The true manifestation of love to man is hard work. The very hardest work that Christians have to do is to love. You can easily pick out a dozen people who have always been “urbane in deportment, courteous in expression and steadfast in friendship” and say, “I dwell in love with these;” but that’s not the love of God for man. There is something more than to have it written on our tomb stones that we. died in love with our friends; that could be said of a dog. We see so many people who are unlovable and it is no easy task to bridge over the chasm and actually reach them, and sometimes people think that we are so unlovable that it is impossible to bridge over the chasm and reach us. I remember one man who was not able to love me a single day for three years. Six months after my three years pastorate was over, he stood up in a great congregation and said, “Thank God, I am at last able to love Brother McKaig.” The test of Christianity is to love people who are not lovable. It is the greatest thing in the world to so dwell in love that you are able to love every body. You may praise Reubling for bridging the Niagara and the Hudson; you may praise Stephenson for bridging the St. Lawrence; you may praise Eliot for bridging the Schuylkill; you may praise Williamson for bridging the Missouri at St. Louis, — but I will give my everlasting praise to the man or the woman who throws the bridges of love over the chasms of hate and across the gulfs of caste and marches across on errands of reconciliation, mercy and love, for that is the greatest work of God.

When one of our missionaries was in India a native missionary came to him, wanting to preach the gospel. The missionary said, “I only have $2.50 a month that I can give you, "Well,” said the native missionary, “I will gladly go for that amount.” He took his ox-cart with his wife and little boy and went out sixteen miles to his native village, where his parents were still living. His parents and friends rejected him and he was compelled to live under a tree. In a few months he came back to the missionary bringing his little boy who had died of cholera. He buried his boy in the missionary’s graveyard and went back to his native village. Soon his wife was taken sick and died of the same disease. When his wife died she saw their little boy and was happy to go. After the funeral of his wife he went back to the village again and told them about her triumphant death. His mother and father received the message and in one year he reported one hundred and twenty-five converts. — The irresistible love of God was shed abroad in his heart.