Trait 15.

TRAIT 15.

His universal love.

TRUE Christians are distinguished from Jews, Mohammedans, and all other worshippers, by that spirit of universal love, which is the chief ornament and glory of their profession. But among evangelical pastors this holy disposition appears in a more eminent degree. They feel for the inconsiderate and the sinful that tender compassion of which Christ has left us an example. Their conduct answers to that beautiful description of charity with which Paul presented the Corinthian Church, and which may be considered as an emblematical representation of his own character from the time of his conversion to the Christian faith. Universal love is that invigorating sap, which, passing from the true vine into its several branches, renders them fruitful in every good work. But this Divine principle circulates through chosen ministers with peculiar force, and in more than ordinary abundance, as so many principal boughs, by which a communication is opened between the root and the lesser branches. The faithful pastor entertains an affecting remembrance of those benevolent expressions which the good Shepherd addressed to the Apostle Peter, and in the person of that apostle to all his successors in the ministry, repeating them even to the third time: “Lovest thou me? Feed my sheep.” As though he had said, The greatest proof you can possibly give of your unfeigned attachment to me, is, to cherish the souls which I have redeemed, and to make them the objects of your tenderest regard. Such is the affectionate precept which every faithful minister has received together with his sacred commission, and to which he yields a more ready and cheerful obedience, from a firm dependence upon the following solemn declaration of his gracious Master: “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, he shall say” to all the children of love, “Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done good unto one of the least of these my brethren,” whether their wants were corporal or spiritual, “ye have done it unto me,” Matthew 25:31, 40.

The love of the evangelical pastor, like that of St. Paul, is unbounded. “God,” saith that charitable apostle, “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth: I exhort, therefore, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men: for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour,” 1 Timothy 2:4. But not content with submitting to the exhortation of St. Paul, with respect to the duty of universal prayer, he endeavours to copy the example of that apostle in labouring for the salvation of all men: “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some,” 1 Corinthians 9:22. Being by regeneration “a partaker of the Divine nature,” 2 Peter 1:4, he bears a lovely, though imperfect resemblance to his heavenly Parent, whose chief perfection is love. Like the High Priest of his profession, he breathes nothing but charity; and like the Father of lights, he makes the sun of his beneficence to rise upon all men. To describe this lesser sun in its unlimited course, and to point out the admirable variety with which it distributes its light and its heat, is to delineate with precision the character of a faithful pastor.