Chapter 5: True Saints I will explain myself. There are two kinds of love: one is the love of benevolence. This has no respect to the character of the person loved, but merely views the individual as exposed to suffering and misery. This God feels towards all men. The other kind includes esteem or approbation of character. God feels this only towards the righteous. He never feels this love towards sinners. He infinitely abhors them. He has an infinitely strong exercise of compassion and abhorrence at the same time. Christians have the same feelings, only not in the same degree, but they have them at the same time. Probably they never feel right unless they have both these feelings in exercise at the same time. The Christian does not feel as God feels towards individuals nor feel according to the true character of the individuals, unless both these feelings exist in his mind at the same time. You see this by one striking characteristic.
The Christian will rebuke most pointedly and frequently those for whom he feels the deepest compassion. Did you never see this?
Did you never see a parent yearning with compassion over a child, and reprove him with tears, and yet with a pungency that would make the little offender quail under his rebuke.
Jesus Christ often manifested strongly these two emotions. He wept over Jerusalem, and yet he tells the reason in a manner that shows his burning indignation against their conduct.
"O Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee!" Ah, what a full view he had of their wickedness, at the moment that he wept with compassion for the doom that hung over them.
It is just so with this class of Christians. You never find one of them addressing a sinner so as merely to make him weep because somebody is weeping for him. But his tender appeals are accompanied with strong rebuke for sin.
I wish you to remember this point that the true friend of God and man never takes the sinner's part, because he never acts through mere compassion. And at the same time, he is never seen to denounce the sinner, without at the same time manifesting compassion for his soul and a strong desire to save him from death.
5. It is a prominent object with such Christians, in all their intercourse with men, to make them friends of God.
Whether they converse, or pray, or attend to the duties of life, it is their prominent object to recommend religion and to lead every body to glorify God. It is very natural they should do this, if they are true friends of God. A true friend of the government wishes everybody to be a friend of the government. A true and affectionate child wishes everybody to love and respect his father. And if only one is at enmity, it is his constant aim and effort to bring him to reconciliation. The same you would expect from a true friend of God, as a leading feature of his character, that he would make it a prominent object of his life to reconcile sinners to God.
Now mark me! If this is not the leading feature of your character, if it is not the absorbing topic of thought and effort to reconcile men to God, you have not the root of the matter in