There are two points in the text which I will call you attention to first. The word "charity," as now used, carries the thought of almsgiving, while in olden times its meaning was conveyed by another word, namely, "love," as we now use it. Next, the conjunction "and" is not in the original, as will be noticed from the italics. Thus the text should read, "Love suffering long is kind,"-it is kind all the time, not that it suffers long and then after a hard struggle is kind.

It is this kind of love that we want to talk about-Love under the Test.

A mental appreciation of God's great plan of salvation is a very rapid matter in comparison with our adherence to its moral principles. To know the principles which underlie the plan of God is one thing, and to conform our lives to them is another matter. We have found it necessary to overcome the desire for the good things of this life; also to overcome the dread and fear of business disaster, sickness, etc. The question was, Could we possibly take the step and stand that would bring so much of loss, sadness, difficulty, persecution and trouble in our lives? We do not wonder as a result that of all those who are willing to believe the testimony of God's Word, only a small proportion are willing to take the step of consecration. We rejoice to think that probably the greater part of those gathered here today have taken the step of consecration, and that you are among those who desire God's character likeness shall become the great motive power in your lives and hearts.

When we come to God's Word and consider what our Heavenly Father is like, we find it all summed up in that little word, "love," and as we thought of His character, we felt a burning in our hearts for that kind of love, and to be also a personification of love. It is this hope which has been uppermost in our hearts and minds for quite a while; with some for five, ten, fifteen or twenty years. Yet, sometimes, we say, I am almost discouraged, and I wonder if the Lord can be pleased with the measure of love that I find in my heart. I find that sometimes it is easy [PE182] to overcome, but when I have trials and tests, then it is very hard, I find it is so difficult then to show the spirit of the Lord and Master; I do the things that I know are not consistent with that of love; I entertain thoughts contrary to love, and do things out of harmony with this calling for which I am striving. I wonder if I have this love, and what God requires of me in the hour of trial. I know that the most of us will appreciate that it is a very simple matter to show love in a grand gathering like this, but how much of this love will we show when we get away from this convention, how kind and long-suffering will we be in our trials? Will we find any permanent gain in our lives from having had this privilege for these few days? Or, on the other hand, will we find this measure of love swept away by the cares of life and be just as lacking as in the past? I am sure that anything I can say, by God's grace and help, which will enable us to understand how love should conduct itself under the test, how this long-suffering love will be kind during it all, will be welcome, and I hope and trust we may say something that will make us better for having heard.

I will first call your attention to four great things that we must keep before our minds, no matter what tests or trials we are called upon to pass through.

You remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10:13, "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." We often hear a brother or sister say, I have had too much trouble; too much sickness; things are too hard; the burdens are too heavy, etc. Dear friends, if you and I have the right kind of faith in God's care and providences, we will have no use for that little word too. Things are never too bad, you are never too sick, trials never too great-they are just enough.

You have probably heard the expression: Well, I do not know that I can be an overcomer; it seems so easy for some, but it is so hard for me. I want to say, dear friends, that you were never more mistaken, for it is not a bit harder for one than it is for another. Not a bit harder for you than for the Apostle Paul, or the Apostle John. Why surely it will be. No, dear friend, it will not; because every one of those who have consecrated themselves to God's service have been begotten of His Holy Spirit, and have an equal opportunity with every other one.to make their calling and election sure to glory, honor and immortality.

I do not see how that can be, such and such a brother has so much more ability than I have. [PE183]

Well, because he has the ability, he has a corresponding responsibility, more than you have.

I have weaknesses that this brother or sister has not.

Well, then, dear brother or sister, the Lord makes allowances for you that He does not make for the others, so that it is just as easy for one as for another. The more ability you have the more responsibility you will have to meet, and the more weaknesses you have, the more grade He will give you.

It is a great deal like a handicap race. The judge gets the records of the various runners, and the one who is the poorest runner gets so many yards start, the next poorest still less of a start, and so on with all the runners, so that all will be treated alike, according to their ability. The one who can run the fastest will have the farthest to run. So it is with us, the more grace and help we need, the more we will get. That is the kind of a race you and I are engaged in, it is a handicap race. If you fail to make your calling and election sure, you will have nothing to say but that you were not willing to do it. You remember Paul said, "I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." We will never be able to say that God did not give us grace enough, nor knowledge enough, nor because the brethren did not take enough interest in us, nor that Satan was too active. All we will be able to say will be, "I was not willing to rely on God's grace and take the step which the Lord made it possible for me to take. All our trials are supervised by the Lord, and we therefore have no reason to think that they are too severe, or too great. That gives us confidence.

It will never come before we have had the proper opportunity to get ready for it. What would you think of a teacher who would give a problem to a child who was not ready for it? The Lord knows when we are ready for the trial, and when it comes, that very fact is an evidence that we are ready for it. This convention is a preparation for trials you are to meet when you leave. The experiences you had before you came were to prepare you for the trials you would get at.this convention. Do not rebel and think you ought to have easier trials, but realize that God knows what is best.

If you bear them alone, then you are losing one of the grandest privileges that is part of the inheritance of the true child of God. In Isa. 43:2, we read, "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest [PE184] through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee." Let us learn the value of prayer along this line. We do not have to pray in a formal way, or just at stated times. Get on a basis of reverential familiarity with God; not telling Him what we want Him to do, but look up to Him as the great Father and Head. One reason why so many of your trials have been so severe, is because you have failed to take them to the Lord in prayer, failed to let Him bear them for you. On the other hand, you may have thought that He was too great to bear your trials. Neither thought is correct. Even the small tests may be carried to the Lord. I will give you one illustration: I cannot boast of any great amount of physical strength, and in the Pilgrim service we have a great amount to carry with us. At one of my appointments, I alighted at a railway station, and I had two heavy suitcases. The brother who met me was an invalid and had all he could do to carry himself, and there was no vehicle that we could get, and he lived at the outskirts of the town. Furthermore, I found I would be obliged to leave the next morning from another depot, so I was compelled to take my suitcases with me. I thought, I am afraid this will almost exhaust me, but I know that the Lord will help me in this trial. So I lifted my heart to the Lord and said, "Lord, I do not ask you to deliver me from suffering, but if this dear brother should feel that I was suffering because of his inability to assist me, he would feel bad. I know that you can easily overrule this so that this dear brother will not realize that it is a trial to me." I want to say that I never had such an experience, and I never felt less exhausted than I did in that experience. The point is, no matter how small our trials are, we want to take it to the Lord and get His assistance; not that we will have no suffering, but that the Lord will grant help in the proper way.

You will get every trial you need, and if you are in the right attitude of heart you will want them all. So we read, "My God shall supply all your needs." Again we read in the 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." If He sees that we need these experiences, then He will permit them to come, and we will also want them. He will give us every experience we need to develop the Christian character. I am also sure that you and I can expect very little benefit from our trials if there are not some painful ones mixed in them.

I remember some time ago I went to see a dentist to have him look at a tooth. He said, Whoever filled that tooth the last time did not want to hurt you. I suppose not, I said, for he was a friend. Now, he said, I can put that filling back, but there is only one way to put it back to stay, but it is very painful, I will have to drill to the nerve. If I put it [PE185] in the same as the last time, it will only be temporary. How do you want it, just temporary, or to stay? I said, I want it to stay. So it is with us in our Christian experiences. We want the filling of humility, love and patience, but there are two kinds. One only stays on the surface and may fall off at the first trial. The other kind is the one that requires drilling upon the human will. We must want the one that is painful, if thereby it will develop the Christian character.

In Proverbs 10:22, we read, "The blessings of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow therewith." Well, you say, I have sorrow. Yes, but what is here meant is that He addeth no sorrow which will not help. If you have a sorrow, it is because it will be influential in making you rich, otherwise God would not allow that sorrow to come to you.

Now we come to the principal portion of our subject, LOVE UNDER THE TEST. There are a few things that are responsible for our trials.

There are various things that test our love, and one of them is that of ignorance. Sometimes it happens that a brother or sister has come to a convention with great expectations, and after they have arrived, and before the first service, they are laid on a bed of sickness and are not able to attend a single session. At almost every convention there is at least one such, and they are tested and tried thereby, and it looks to them as though God did not love them very much; because they did all they could to get to the convention, and now they are to be deprived of that for which they came. There is a certain amount of rebellion here and it is a severe test, and sometimes there is a little injury done to their love, but it is largely due to ignorance. If you and I had the proper conception of the glorious object God intends to be accomplished in our lives, we would recognize that those experiences are the ones that we need. The Lord knows what is best, and sees sometimes that such an experience is best. We get into the habit of planning our own course, thinking we know what is best, but sometimes they are the very worst for us.

It is not only ignorance because of our inability to discern the Lord's will, but we find furthermore, we are also tested, because of our ignorance, in connection with the Lord's people. We are quite sure that we do not know it all, but we are thankful that we know as much as much as we do, and year after year, we see things that we did not see before, and it is quite likely that when these things are presented to us, our ignorance makes the matter a test to us. We may say, It is all wrong, it can't be right, and therefore it would be to our injury and to the injury of others. Trials and tests over the covenant question are largely tests due [PE186] to ignorance. When these things came, a great many when seeing them in the Watch Tower thought, That looks different from what I thought, it seems to me it is the wrong view of the matter, and in their ignorance they did not stop to investigate and weigh it all over. That was because of ignorance, and ignorance led to bitterness, and bitterness to strife, and strife to rebellion, and rebellion to outer darkness. Let us show the spirit of wisdom. If we cannot see eye to eye on the instant, let us say, Well, I am willing to be patient in the matter, I am willing to investigate fully to see if there is any point here that I am ignorant on-we are then sure to get a great blessing.

Furthermore, it is ignorance along other lines. I remember a brother saying, Brother Barton, I had quite a trial. I thought I would go to the Bible House at Allegheny and visit Brother Russell, I thought I would spend about two days there and be with him. I thought of how much Brother Russell could tell me, and of all the questions I could ask him, and what a blessing I would have. But, when I got there, I was surprised, I could see Brother Russell for only fifteen minutes. But the Lord gave me grace to see that if that brother could give every brother an hour of his time, we would never get a copy of the Watch Tower or anything else. It was ignorance on the part of that brother. We want to be in that attitude where we are willing to learn from all these things.

We frequently find that selfishness will bring our love for God and His people to the straining point. Selfishness wants to make the way just as easy as possible, and it wants to make a cheap sacrifice, one that will not cost any more than is absolutely necessary. If it is in the heart of any of us, then it is only a question of time before we will be injured by it. In this connection we recall the beautiful illustration of how David, after he had sinned when he numbered the people contrary to the will of the Lord, he came to the threshing floor of Araunah for oxen and threshing instruments, etc. with which to make a sacrifice. The King offered David all that he wanted, but David insisted that he should pay for them, saying, For I am going to make the sacrifice, and it is to be something that has cost me something. If David had accepted that offer and burned up the oxen and threshing instruments, it would not have been David's sacrifice, but the sacrifice of Araunah. If our sacrifice is to have any value, it must be one that has cost us something. After spending your time and money for the good things of this world, there is no sacrificing in offering what you have left. After spending your time reading the newspaper, etc., and then spending the little time that is left in reading what the Lord would have you read, where is the [PE187] sacrifice? What time have you for the volunteer work, or anything else in the Lord's service? That is not a satisfactory sacrifice to the Lord. Shall we try to cheapen the sacrifice and offer to the Lord less than the best we have? I am sure some of the brothers and sisters have made serious mistakes along this line. I have met some who contemplated going into the colporteur work, but their conversation revealed the fact that they wanted to go in in a way that would not cost them much. Some have nice homes, and nice businesses, and they say, I am anxious, I desire to go into the work, but if I sell out, I must do it at a great loss, but if I can sell at my price, then I will go into the work. Love is lacking there, for IF WE LOVED THE WORK WE WOULD GET INTO IT AT ANY COST, if thereby we could offer that to the Lord.

Back in the past ages there were a number of people who read in the Scriptures, "If any man will be my disciple, let him take up his cross and follow me." How could they do that? They were anxious to take up their cross seemingly, but they were not willing to take up the Scripture phase of the matter. Many of them had silk crosses sewed on their clothing, and so when they put their coats on, they imagined they were taking up their crosses. How strange they could think that God would be satisfied with that. It is not a cross of silk or cotton on our back that we are to wear, but it is the spirit that will take up the cross of self-sacrifice, of the complete submission to the will of the Heavenly Father, and by taking up that cross day by day, we will at last finish our course with joy and hear Him say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." Love delights to sacrifice; it is the province of love to sacrifice. It is one of the manifestations of love to show that there is the spirit of sacrifice there. If we have the spirit that does not want to sacrifice, but will find excuses, then rest assured it is only a question of time when selfishness will crush the little love there is there.

This is a lack of faith. So many of God's people are full of fear; they are fearful that this or that thing will occur. You and I should never entertain the thought of fear, except scripturally-reverence. You remember how the Scriptures admonish us that we should lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us. There is nothing that will be more likely to trip our steps than that of fear. I met a brother once who was in a very peculiar position. I told him he reminded me of a man who owned a store, and suddenly he would have a fear that his roof had blown off, so out he would rush to see, only to find it in place. Then he would have a fear that someone had thrown a stone through the plate-glass window, but upon investigation he found it was [PE188] not injured and no one had thrown a stone. Then he would fear that some one was digging up his walk in the back yard, only to find that nothing of the kind was being done. That is not the position we want to occupy, dear friends. The adversary would like to have us become discouraged, but God will not permit us to be tempted above that we are able to bear. We will have to believe that they will not come to us unless they are best for us, and we want them to come in the right way. We know that some of the Lord's people have been permitting their fears to take this course.

We find so many of God's people are impatient; impatient to have the work done at once; impatient to have the trials over, before they finish their work. Many of these trials require time, and we ought to be willing to have the trial, whether it stops the next minute or whether it remains for a long time, and the important thing is to know whether it is doing the thing that it is intended to do. Remember the patience of Abraham-God told him to offer up his son, go a three days' journey and then offer him up. Why, no Lord, he might have said, I want to have it over. If Abraham had talked that way, do you think that the Father would have called him the "father of the faithful?" No, but Abraham was willing to go as far and have the trial continue as long as God thought was best, and that should be our position.

Not only is our love for God tested by impatience, but also our love for the brethren. It is not surprising that they are not as good as we would like to have them, but God is patient with us, and so we should overlook the impatience of others. You and I want to try to treat one another just as the Lord treats us. I am afraid that if He treated us as we treat others, we would get very poor treatment. You remember what the prophet says in Zech. 4:10, "These are the eyes of the Lord that run too and fro throughout the earth," meaning that as individuals, we are to look at things from the Lord's standpoint, and if we do, then how different will our trial seem than they would otherwise. We will not look at any weakness or uncouthness, or undesirableness, but will endeavor to look at the new creature that dwells within. None of us could be satisfied with ourselves or one another as old creatures, but we can from the standpoint of faith as new creatures in Christ Jesus. We are all nothing-think of what a glorious thing God is making out of nothing! Think how the Lord made the diamond. He did not make it out of gold or silver or other precious metals, but, so to speak, took a big barrel of soot, such as you would get out of your stove-pipe, put it down in the earth under the pressure of a great rock, and after many [PE189] years took it out, and there was a beautiful diamond. If the Lord can do that, He can make a jewel out of us, and by and by we maybe permitted to shine as one of the precious jewels in the Lord's kingdom.

We realize that we have approached the time of trial for the Lord's people in a great many respects, and I have noticed for quite a while the parallel between the life of our Lord and His people, especially the last part of His life, how that when our Lord rode into Jerusalem, you remember that correspondency pointed to the second advent, and you remember how they shouted at that time, and it looked as though the Jews were about ready to be converted. The same thing is true regarding the Lord's second advent; it was accompanied by the wonderful revival meetings of Moody, Sankey and others, and it almost looked as though there was going to be a great conversion of the world. But those people, who shouted and greeted our Lord when He rode into Jerusalem, soon turned away from Him and only a little handful went into that upper room. So it was at the second advent. Of those who seemed ready to accept Him at His second advent, only a few remained loyal, but we remember that the Lord took those few into the upper room condition, and we have been privileged to be of that class. It was in that upper room that Jesus taught those wonderful lessons, and set the example of humility, and it was there that the Lord's Supper was celebrated. So it is now in this upper room condition, you and I and all the Lord's faithful disciples, we have been feasting with the Lord. We also remember that in that room Judas went out, but there was not many there. So while in that upper room condition, the same thing was true, very few compared with what might have been expected. But now, it seems that we have come down from that upper room; it seems that we are in the garden of truth; we realize the glorious truths that gleam around us, but also realize that we are in the Gethsemane condition, that we are in a sifting condition. We remember how the Lord left all the disciples but three, and took those three a little farther, then left them to watch, came back and found them asleep, and said, "What, can you not watch with me one hour?" Finally, the third time, and coming to them and finding them asleep, He said, "Sleep on and take your rest." There, dear friend, seems to be the point where we are today. It seems to me that we can see some of the Lord's people standing back there by the gate, and we can expect a great many more falling away during the next year, and if we are of the faithful kind, we will be admonished to watch! Brother, can you watch just this one hour that is left? Our hearts bleed as we have seen some zealous Peters, some loving Johns, and some active James unable to watch one hour. Let us be of that Jesus Class, of which Jesus is the head, the class that is going to watch and endure unto [PE190] the end. It is a test of our love for the Lord and for His people, and for the world of mankind. Will we endure it in the spirit of the Master? We can, dear friends, but the question is, WILL WE?

In God's providence, may we ever have that spirit, no matter what may come, the spirit, the LOVE THAT SUFFERING LONG IS KIND. Amen.