1. This is necessary in all duties. Would we pray? Our hands must be
disciples. The commandment Christ gives them a little before his departure, is to love one another, as the special character whereby they should be known to be his disciples. Hence it is called his commandment, as peculiarly his as the commandment to believe, for they are both joined together: 1 John 3:23, 'And this is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus
Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment,'—as that which he took a special delight in. As if those two, faith and love, made up the body of the Christian religion. In regard of this commandment the apostle tells the Thessalonians, 1 Thes. 4:9, that they were taught of God; and this Christ presseth again and again; for he repeats it often in that last sermon of his, which he would not have pressed so much, when he had so many things to deliver, if it were not necessary. He calls it a new commandment, not only in regard of the renewal of it; it having been as it were out of date, and wholly lost among the Jewish factions; not only because it is more commanded in the gospel, as sacrifices were under the law more pressed than this; but in regard of the pattern. Before, it was 'Love thy neighbour as thyself,' but they had no such glorious exemplar, before the love of Christ came to be unfolded to the world. Now it is,
'Love one another as I have loved you. So powerful a motive was never affixed to the moral law, which commanded love; former ages never had so fair and so full a copy for it as this. And so punctual were the ancient Christians in this, that Tertullian saith, it was the amazement of the heathens to see them Animo animaque misceri, their souls and minds united and mingled with each other; and, indeed, the more believers love God, the more they will love one another; as lines, the nearer they are to the centre, the nearer they are to one another.
1. This is necessary in all duties. Would we pray? Our hands must be 'lifted up without wrath and doubting,' 1 Tim. 2:8. Would we hear the word? If we are 'swift to hear,' we must be 'slow to wrath,' James
1:19. Would we offer a sacrifice at the altar? we must 'first be reconciled to our brother,' Mat. 5:25. Fire from heaven will not else kindle the sacrifice. One of the leading sins to be purged out of the