If a man keeps the law, I know he is a lover of his neighbour. But he is not a lover because he keeps the law: he keeps the law because he is a lover.
The law itself is infinite, reaching to such delicacies of action, that the man who tries most will be the man most aware of defeat.
Love is law, because it is infinitely more than law. It is of an altogether higher region than law-is, in fact, the creator of law. Had it not been for love, not one of the shalt-nots of the law would have been uttered.
I do not say it is conscious love that breeds justice, but I do say that without love in our nature justice would never be born.
It [Love] is the sole justice of which we are capable, and that perfected will comprise all justice.
We are made on too large a scale altogether to have any pure relation to mere justice, if indeed we can say there is such a thing. It is but an abstract idea which, in reality, will not be abstracted. The law comes to make us long for the needful grace,- that is, for the divine condition, in which love is all, for God is Love.
The whole system of the universe works upon this law-the driving of things upward towards the centre.
The mystery of individuality and consequent relation is deep as the beginnings of humanity, and the questions thence arising can be solved only by him who has, practically, at least, solved the holy necessities resulting from his origin. In God alone can man meet man.
Although the Lord would be pleased with any man for doing a thing because he said it, he would show his pleasure by making the man more and more dissatisfied until he knew why the Lord had said it.
Otherness is the essential ground of affection.
When will once begins to aspire, it will soon find that action must precede feeling, that the man may know the foundation itself of feeling.
The whole system of divine education as regards the relation of man and man, has for its end that a man should love his neighbour as himself.
The whole constitution of human society exists for the express end, I say, of teaching the two truths by which man lives, Love to God and Love to Man.
The love that enlarges not its borders, that is not ever spreading and including, and deepening, will contract, shrivel, decay, die.
A man must not choose his neighbour; he must take the neighbour that God sends him. In him, whoever he be, lies, hidden or revealed, a beautiful brother. The neighbour is just the man who is next to you at the moment, the man with whom any business has brought you in contact.
(As was the quote from “Kingship” last month.)