To be near unto God - pagina 202

outward

appearance

interests

us.

It

is

more

strongly attractive when we admire a man's courage and energy, devotion and self-sacrifice. But all this passes away. do not assimilate it into our life. As a rule, the emotions of the heart, which do not touch the soul, do not rise higher than the feelings, sometimes not higher even than the pseudo-life of sentimentality. The function of the heart onh' derives all real, abiding worth from the relation which it sustains to the soul. This does not imply bj^ any means that the heart is a superfluity, and that the soul alone is important. On the contrary the heart has been given us of God as an absolutely indispensable organ of the soul. That which stirs in the soul can only come through the means of the heart to that supreme perception and lofty utterance which we glorify as love. In the great commandment, therefore, Jesus puts the heart in the foreground. First: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and only then: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul. This could not be otherwise. Love does not have its beginnings in the soul, but in God. It comes to us from God. And only when this love from God enters through the heart into the soul does it awaken in the soul the life of reciprocal love for God, which now presses from the soul into the heart and makes us to love God. But this last stage is only reached through he heart. In the heart only is the flame ignited, and there the fire of love burns. As long as love is confined to the soul it partakes more of the nature of worship. The heart alone breathes forth tenderness and warmth. Only when we love God

We

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