Is this Love Only for This Life? - an excerpt from George MacDonald's sermon, "Love Your Neighbour," in Creation in Christ, 303.
When once to a man the human face is the human face divine, and the hand of his neighbor is the hand of a brother, then will he understand what St. Paul meant when he said, "I wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren." But he will no longer understand those who, so far from feeling the love of their neighbor an essential of their being, expect to be set free from its law in the world to come. There, at least, for the glory of God, they may limit its expansive tendencies to the narrow circle of their heaven. On its battlements of safety, they will regard hell from afar, and say to each other, "Hark! Listen to their moans. But do not weep, for they are our neighbors no more."
St. Paul would be wretched before the throne of God, if he thought there was one man beyond the pale of His mercy, and that as much for God's glory as for the man's sake. And what shall we say of the man Christ Jesus? Who, that loves his brother, would not, upheld by the love of Christ, and with a dim hope that in the far-off time there might be some help for him, arise from the company of the blessed, and walk down into the dismal regions of despair, to sit with the last, the only unredeemed, the Judas of his race, and be himself more blessed in the pains of hell, than in the glories of heaven?
But it is a wild question. God is, and shall be, All in all. Father of our brothers and sisters! You will not be less glorious than we, taught of Christ, are able to think You. When You go into the wilderness and seek, You will not come home until you have found. It is because we hope not for them in You, not knowing Your love, that we are so hard and so heartless to the brothers and sisters You have given us.
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