THE LOVE OF GOD THE FIRST AND GREAT
COMMANDMENT ɪ
St. Matthew xxii, 37-38—“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.”
IT is said that one who was a lawyer asked our Divine
Lord a question, tempting Him, and saying, “Master,
which is the great commandment in the law?”
The answer is as given in the text.
The motive and spirit of the human being in bringing
questions to Christ must not be to tempt Him; must not be
with the purpose of showing aloofness from Him, the pur-
pose of resisting conviction, of practising intellectual acute-
ness and subtlety; must not be with the aim of justifying
the mind in maintaining suspense and preventing faith and
acceptance.
If a question is to be asked there must be back of it the
longing for truth, the sense of reverence for the Master,
an humble seeking and a sincere willingness to be convinced;
there must be the honest and good heart ready to appreciate
and apply the words of eternal life which Christ will speak.
The questioning of Christ must not be with the aim and
effort to view religion as merely a matter of intellect; to
reduce it to mere mental conclusions and definitions apart
from the feeling and the will, apart from love and obedience.
The interpretation of religion as merely a mental matter is
1Baccalaureate sermon of the twelfth annual commencement of the Rice
Institute, delivered by the Right Reverend Davis Sessums, M.A., D.D.,
Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Louisiana, in the academic
court, at nine o’clock Sunday morning, June 5, 1927.
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