No love, no life

The life of Christianity consists very much in our love to Christ. Withoutlove to Christ, we are as much without spiritual life as a carcass when thesoul is fled from it is without natural life. Faith without love to Christis a dead faith; and a Christian without love to Christ is a dead Christian,dead in sins and trespasses. Without love to Christ, we may have the name of Christians, but we are wholly without the nature. We may have the form of godliness, but are wholly without the power. 'Give me thine heart' is thelanguage of God to all the children of men (Prov. 23:26). And 'give me thy love' is the language of Christ to all His disciples. Christ knows the command and influence which love to Him, in the truth and strength of it,has. It will engage all the other affections of His disciples for Him, that if He have their love, their desires will be chiefly after Him. Their delights will be chiefly in Him, their hopes and expectations will bechiefly from Him; their hatred, fear, grief, anger will be carried forth chiefly to sin, as it is offensive to Him. He knows that love will engage and employ for Him all the powers and faculties of their souls...If they have much love to Him, they will not think much of denying themselves, taking up His cross, and following wherever He leads them; love to Christ then being essential to true Christianity, so earnestly looked for by our Lord and Master, so powerfully commanding in the soul and over the whole man, so greatly influential on our duty.

Thomas Vincent

The True Christian's Love of the Unseen Christ

in 'Day by Day with the English Puritans'

Compiled and Edited by Randall J Pedersen published by Hendrickson