Chapter 23: Love Is the Whole Of Religion always a sign of pride. If a person is full of love, it is impossible to make him exercise sinful anger while love continues. He exercises such indignation as God exercises, and as holy angels feel, at what is base and wrong, but he will not be provoked by it. Thinketh no evil.
Show me a man that is always suspicious of the motives of others, and forever putting the worst construction on the words and actions of his fellow men, and I will show you one who has the devil in him, not the Holy Ghost. He has that in his own mind which makes him think evil of others. If an individual is honest and simple-hearted himself, he will be the last, to think evil of others. He will not be always smelling heresy or mischief in others.
On the contrary, such persons are often liable to be imposed on by designing men, not from any want of good sense, but from the effect of love. They do not suspect evil, where the exterior appears fair, nor without the strongest proof.
Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. See a man who exults at his neighbor's fall, or cries out, I told you so; and I tell you, that man is far enough from being perfect in love. Beareth all things, all provocations and injuries, without revenge, Believeth all things, instead of being hard to be convinced of what is in favor of others, is always ready to believe good wherever there is the least evidence of it. Hopeth all things; even where there is reason to suspect evil, as long as there is room for hope, by putting the best construction upon the thing which it will bear. Where you see an individual that has not this Spirit, rest assured, he is by no means sincerely in love. Nay, he has no love at all.
I might pursue this course of thought farther, but have not time. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor. Mark that, no ill! Perfect love never overreaches, nor defrauds, nor oppresses, nor does any ill to a neighbor. Would a man under the influence of perfect love, sell his neighbor rum? Never. Would a man that loved God with all his heart, perfectly, hold his neighbor as a slave? Love worketh no ill to his neighbor; slavery denies him the wages that he has earned, and perhaps sells him, and tears him away from his family, deprives him of the Bible, and endeavors as far as possible to make him a brute. There cannot be greater falsehood and hypocrisy, than for a man who will do that, to pretend that he loves God, now that light is shed upon this subject, and the attention of men turned upon it. Will a man hate his own flesh? How can he love God that hates or injures his neighbor?
I designed to remark on one other effect of perfect love. It uniformly shows itself in great efforts for the sanctification of the church and the salvation of souls. Where a person is negligent or deficient in either of these, he is by no means perfect in love, whatever may be his pretensions.
REMARKS I. You see why it is true, what the apostle James says, "If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain." The man that professes to be religious, and yet allows himself to speak against his