I have seen almost all he beautiful things God has
made; I have enjoyed almost every pleasure that He has planned for
man; and yet as I look back I see standing out above all the life
that has gone four or five short experiences, when the love of God
reflected itself in some poor imitation, some small act of love
of mine, and these seem to be the things which alone of all one's
life abide. Everything else in all our lives is transitory. Every
other good is visionary. But the acts of love which no man knows
about, or can ever know about--they never fail.
In the book of Matthew, where the Judgement Day is depicted for us
in the imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing the sheep
from the goats, the test of a man then is not, "How have I believed?"
but "How have I loved?" The test of religion, the final test of
religion, is not religiousness, but Love. I say the final test
of religion at that great Day is not religiousness, but Love; not
what I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved,
but how I have discharged the common charities of life. Sins of
commission in that awful indictment are not even referred to. By
what we have not done, BY SINS OF OMISSION, we are judged. It could
not be otherwise. For the withholding of love is the negation of
the spirit of Christ, the proof that we never knew Him, that for
us He lived in vain.
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