THE preachers who love Christ better than partyism, will preach Christ, will call the people to Christ, and induce them to love him, and love all that do love him. They will inquire his will, and do it. They will exchange the love of party for the love of Christ, and find it so much higher, holier, purer and happier, that they will ignore all party feuds, wrangling and strifes, and maintain simply “the faith once delivered to the saints.” No doctrinal corrections, or corrections in ordinances, or in organization and government, will ever amount to anything, or save a people, who have not the love of Christ. We may be told that we may be mistaken, that they do love Christ. We cannot be mistaken in this, for the Lord says, “From the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. A man full of the love of Christ, will speak of Christ. The theme of his heart will dwell upon his tongue. Where Christ has promised to be, they will be with him.” “Where two or three are met together in my name, there,” says the Lord, “I will be.” How many go to these places where Jesus has promised to be? How many go to the Lord’s table, to remember his dying love? How many of the preachers will sit down together, as loving disciples, and meditate upon his dying love, his great suffering, as he bore our sins on the accursed tree?
When we have lost friends, we go to the grave, and think of them, try to bring them up in our memories. We talk with our friends about them, and about seeing them and meeting them in another state. How often do the professors of religion, in our times, think of the grave of Jesus, his resurrection, his coronation? How often do they commemorate his sufferings, and meditate upon his great love to us? His name is almost set aside, his sufferings almost forgotten, his love, even his dying love, scarcely mentioned! Yet the word of the Lord, when translated into English, thunders in our ears!—“If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, he will be accursed when the Lord comes.” We shall hear these words, and be judged by them, in a day when we shall feel their force. Jesus is the “one Lord,” the one object of love, the one head and king. Shall we make an effort to rescue the people from party influence, and win their hearts and affections from all the frivolous objects upon which they are placed in partyism, and place them upon Him who is the express image of the invisible God, the brightness of the Father’s glory, and in whom all the fullness of the godhead dwells bodily? Who, with the love of Christ in his own breast, can fail to see that the work now for good men, is to call the attention of all men to Christ, to his word, his cause, his church, his salvation, his way, that they may love him supremely, and be his for evermore?