I say this is no dream or fancy, it is an actual fact which thousands
and hundreds of thousands on this earth have felt. Nothing but love
to Christ, nothing but loving Him because He first loved us, can
constrain and force a man as with a mighty feeling which he cannot
resist, to labour day and night for Christ's sake, and therefore for
the sake of God the Father of Christ. What else do you suppose it
was which could have stirred up the apostles--above all, that wise,
learned, high-born, prosperous man, St. Paul, to leave house and
home, and wander in daily danger of his life? What does St. Paul say
himself? "The love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge,
and if one died for all then were all dead, and that He died for all,
that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but
unto Him who died for them." And what else could have kept St. Paul
through all that labour and sorrow of his own choosing, of which he
speaks in the chapter before?--"We are troubled on every side, yet
not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but
not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in
the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus
might be made manifest in our body; for we which live are alway
delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus
might be made manifest in our body.
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