The Empire of Love

ent sinner than over ninety and nine just men who needed no repentance, so in His final addresses to His followers He again discloses the unseen world. These fin

definition. It is around the word "eternal" and the nature of the punishment suggested, that the theological battles of centuries have centred. Yet the really central point of both the vision and the teaching, i

inted with the nature of man, but one who knows human life so thoroughly that He is the representative man-"the Son of Man"; and although He is now the Judge, yet He still calls Himself by the tender name of the Shepherd. The tribunal is therefore the tribunal of love, and the court is the court of love. He who shall judge mankind is He who judges Peter and the woman who was a sinner, He of whose tenderness and sympathy we have assurance in a hundred acts of me

n and women of opposite disposition, in spite of all their outward rectitude of behaviour, find themselves numbered with the goats. A cup of cold water given to a child, a meal bestowed upon a beggar, a garment shared with the naked-these things purchase heaven. One who Himself had been thirsty, hungry, and naked, judges their worth, and He judges by His own remembered need. It is love alone that is divine, love alone that prepares

nnocent, so daring, so tenderly imagined, and so impossibly probable. Alas, that most of us are too wise to understand it, and too worldly to receive it. Yet in nothing t

and joy when solitary penitents turn homewards from the roads of sin! But it is not stranger than that kingdom in which Jesus lived habitually, the kingdom He created round Him in His earthly life. In that kingdom also love was lord, and she who anointed the tired feet of the Master against His burial was promised everlasting remembrance, and she who out of her penury gave her mite t

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