---

Now the end of the commandment is charity. When we know the Divine end or purpose, we get light on all that leads to that end. Charity, or love that is like God's own love, is the end of all. Religious principle in its root and stem is to blossom into the beauty of Christ-like character. Christianity is a truth, that it may be a life. It is not to be mere doctrine, or mere ritual. We may be fiery disputants without being faithful soldiers. We may even be workers in the vineyard, without the faith which worketh by love. Ecclesiasticism is not necessarily religion. There may be Church uniformity, Church harmony, and aesthetic ceremonial, and yet, so far as Divine life is concerned, there may be "no breath at all in the midst of it." Let us confine ourselves to the first word.

I. CHARITY IS HIGHER THAN UNIFORMITY. With Constantine Christianity meant uniformity, with Hildebrand it meant supremacy. But in its spirituality and simplicity the gospel remains the same in all ages. We are to live Christ; and to live Christ is to live in love, as Christ also loved us, and gave himself for us. Ecclesiasticism is often a system of severe outward drill, an obedience to outward rite and cult. So the Romish Church in Spain, centuries ago, forcibly converted the Moors by dashing holy water in their faces, and so admitted them into the communion of the Church. The gospel cannot be spread by a rough-and-ready "multitudinism" like that. It must begin in personal faith, and work in the spirit of love.

II. CHARITY FINDS ITS IMAGE IN GOD. We need not ask what this love is. For we have seen it incarnated in the words and deeds of the Christ, and in his sufferings for "our sakes" upon the cross.

1. It is not the selfish love which gives affection where it receives affection, and turns even a gift into barter and exchange.

2. It is not the costless love which will be an almoner of bounty where there is no personal self-denial and suffering; but it gives itself.

3. It is not the love of a passing mood, which ministers in affectionate ways in times of high-wrought emotion; but a love which is full of forbearance with our faults, and is triumphant over our faithlessness. So the end of the commandment is worthy of the God who gives the commandment. Like himself, it is charity. And we have reached the highest vision-point in Revelation, when we see in its sublime teachings, not were commandments which may be arbitrary, but an unfolding of the nature of God. - W.M.S.

---

---

KJV: Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:

WEB: but the goal of this command is love, out of a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith;