Love: The Best Advertisement for Truth, June 21

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. John 13:35.YRP 181.1

Man may become a fellow laborer with God in carrying out the great work of redemption. God allows each man his own sphere of action while He has given His Word as the guide of life. He has also given the Holy Spirit as a sufficient power to overcome all hereditary and cultivated tendencies to evil, and to impress His own character on the human agent, and, through him, upon all who shall come within the sphere of his influence.YRP 181.2

The human agent is urged to cooperate with God, to work out His mercy, His goodness, and His love, thus impressing other minds. Every man is to become an instrumentality through which the Holy Spirit can work. He can become this only by yielding all his capabilities to the control of the Spirit. God gave His Spirit upon the day of Pentecost, and through [the Spirit's] working upon receptive hearts [God] could impress all with whom the believers came in contact.YRP 181.3

Through our relation of friendship and familiarity with human beings like ourselves, we may exert an uplifting influence. Those who are united in a common hope and faith in Christ Jesus can be a blessing to one another. Jesus says, “Love one another; as I have loved you” (John 13:34). Love is not simply an impulse, a transitory emotion, dependent upon circumstances; it is a living principle, a permanent power. The soul is fed by the streams of pure love that flow from the heart of Christ, as a wellspring that never fails.YRP 181.4

Oh, how is the heart quickened, how are its motives ennobled, its affections deepened, by this communion! Under the education and discipline of the Holy Spirit, the children of God love one another, truly, sincerely, unaffectedly, “without partiality, and without hypocrisy” (James 3:17). And this because the heart is in love with Jesus. Our affection for one another springs from our common relation to God. We are one family, we love one another as He loved us. When compared with this true, sanctified, disciplined affection, the shallow courtesy of the world, the meaningless expressions of effusive friendship, are as chaff to the wheat.—The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials, 1508, 1509.YRP 181.5