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XX. God the Holy Spirit the Love which Dwells in the Heart.
"It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even
Aaron’s beard; that went down to the skirts of his garments.” —Psalmcxxxiii. 2.
The fact that love can radiate within man does not insure him the possession of true
and real Love, unless, according to His eternal counsel, God is pleased to enter into personal
fellowship with him. So long as man knows Him only from afar and not near, God is a
stranger to him. He may admire His Love, have a faint sense of it, be pleasantly affected by
it, and even rejoice to see others drink from its Fountain, yet never come a step nearer to it.
In God’s hand he may be the means of showing others the way to it, without knowing it by
personal experience.
The true Love is one with and inseparable from God. It may radiate its brightness even
in the animal, but Love itself can not enter the heart except God come first. And God’s elect
have the royal privilege of calling this gift their own. All their wealth and treasure consist
in the fact that from the hand of their Lord they have received this gold tried in the fire.
Not, however, as tho this love, wholly possessing them, shall henceforth be of all their
actions the only impulse. From St. Paul we learn that, while the Love of God is shed abroad
in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, much evil may be found among us; wherefore we are ad-
monished to exercise patience and self-denial. But tho, like faith, Love may be in the germ
and nothing be visible on the surface, in the warm soil, germ-like, it may swell, sprout, and
strike out its roots in the ground. Hence, however defective and incomplete its form, Love
itself dwells in our hearts; and by our own experience we are conscious of it. Who of God’s
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children does not recall the blessed moments when this Love fell upon the soul as mild dew
drops upon the thirsty leaf, filling him with a felicity unknown heretofore? This blessed ex-
perience was heavenly and supernatural. The soul actually felt the everlasting arms under-
neath, and acknowledged that God is good and essentially Love. It is true the divine Majesty
as it were consumed the soul, but at the same time it uplifted and glorified it. The soul
realized that it was surrounded by Love, uplifted above the low plain of vanity, and, more
blessed still, that it had received power to embrace God with the arms of its own love. It is
true this does not last. The evening star of hope is followed again and again by the dawn of
the common, every-day life; but by that experience we have seen the heavens opened, the
sign of Eternal Love descending, and, heard the music of its voice saying: “Behold your God.”
Hence these twomust always go together: (1) Love shed abroad in our hearts by the
Holy Ghost, and (2) the glad tidings that our God has come to us. And these are one and
the same, for, as we have seen before, when the Eternal One comes to dwell with man, it is
not the Father, nor the Son, but the Holy Spiritwhose office is to enter into man’s spirit and
XX. God the Holy Spirit the Love which Dwells in the Heart.
XX. God the Holy Spirit the Love which Dwells in the Heart.
