Men know by instinct the lover
of his kind. Men forgive a hundred defects for the sake of reality.
Perhaps the sublimest of all justifications of Christ's law of love is
that no man has truly practiced it in any age without himself rising
into a life of memorable significance, without immediate attestations
of its virtue in the transformation of society, without attracting to
himself the reverence and affection of multitudes of fellow workers who
have rendered him the same adoring discipleship that the friends of
Jesus gave to Him.
No doubt it will also be said that were the ideals thus indicated to
triumph, there would be nothing left for the direction of society but a
mischievous and sentimental spirit of amiability. The general fibre of
virtue would disintegrate. Pity for the sinner, pushed to such
extremes, would in the end mean tolerance for sin. But to such an
objection the character of Jesus furnishes its own reply. The
character of Jesus displays love in its supreme type, but it is wholly
lacking in that weak-featured travesty of love which we call
amiability. His hatred of sin was at times a furious rage. His lips
breathed flame as well as tenderness; "Out of His mouth proceeded a
sharp two-edged sword." We may search literature in vain to discover
any words half as terrible and scathing as the words in which Jesus
described sin.
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