December 8

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart” (Matt. 22:37).
“Love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:10).

“With all thy heart,” is the command. Our love-power may be very limited, but so long as it is fully employed in loving God, we fulfill the divine requirement just the same as those who have the larger capacities. A thimble may be as full as a bucket. To love God with more than all our heart—beyond our power or capacity—would be impossible, and to love Him less than to the full measure of our power to love, would be short of His requirement. “He that does as well as he can, does well: angels can do no better, and God requires no more.”(From New Testament Holiness by Thomas Cook. Used by permission of the Epworth Press).


God measures souls by their capacity
For entertaining His best Angel, Love.
Who loveth most is nearest kin to God,
Who is all Love, or Nothing.

He who sits and looks out on the palpitating world,
And feels his heart swell in him large enough
To hold all men within it, he is near
His great Creator’s standard, though he dwells
Outside the pale of churches, and knows not
A feast-day from a fast-day, or a line
Of Scripture even. What God wants of us
Is that outreaching bigness that ignores
All littleness of aims, or loves, or creeds,
And clasps all Earth and Heaven in its embrace.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

The love of Christ is my study, but I am frequently at a loss to understand how it is that my love to Him is so small. . . . Could I die for Thee? Could I suffer long, and still love with a passion like Thine? I am crying to God daily, hourly, constantly, to receive a thousand times more love.
—William Bramwell.

My present capacity for the love of God is filled, but so precious is the treasure that I am coveting a vessel a thousand times larger. Hence with Charles Wesley I daily exclaim:
“Insatiate to this spring I fly;
I drink, and yet am ever dry;
Ah! who against Thy charms is proof?
Ah! who that loves can love enough?”
—Daniel Steele.

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