"HEREIN IS OUR LOVE MADE PERFECT"

To be truly blessed we must fervently love. But how shall love flow from a heart supremely selfish? A simple purpose to be benevolent will not render us such. "Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles."

There is but one power in the universe adequate to such a change. The cross of Christ must be planted in the centre of the heart upon which selfishness sits enthroned. "When the cross is planted there, selfishness is nailed to it, and dies with Christ upon it.

Then the soul rises to a new life—a life of love. As the affections and purposes accumulate around this blissful centre, in the sweet and beautiful language of another, "they roll abroad, and take the circle of the universe." "We have known and believed the love which God hath to us." "Herein is our love made perfect."

Faith is the "sealing act of moral election," by which the cross is planted in the heart and selfishness dethroned, by which the soul becomes so united to Christ that it dies in the world and the flesh, to selfishness and sin, and lives to love, to life eternal, to holiness, and to God.

Reader, cease from all effort after the exercise of love,

in every direction but one, the cross of Christ.

There let your faith fasten till you find yourself "dead with Christ,"

and with Him rise to newness of life.