“The whole duty of man can be performed only when the life and power of that law which underlies both tables shall enter into the heart and dwell there with complete control over all its thoughts and actions. When this takes place, and the graces of Christianity are planted and rooted in the human heart by the Spirit of God, its capacity for doing good is enlarged in every direction, whether in human charity, personal benevolence, general philanthropy, or Christian privilege and duty. Man cannot be a lover of his race, as God would have him love that race, without first having the love of God shed abroad in his own heart. It is only when human charity proceeds from the heart in which Christ dwells that it becomes Christian charity.

In that matchless delineation of gifts as arranged by Paul (1 Cor. 13, passim) of understanding, and knowledge, and charity, this one grace of God’s love underlies and overlaps them all. Though one should give all his ‘goods to feed the poor,’ and hath not this divine love (agape) planted in his heart, ‘it profiteth nothing.’ It is deemed necessary just here to speak with emphasis of this fact, because of the very strong disposition and tendency on the part of many to make the outworkings of the kindlier feelings of unregenerate nature answer both conditions of the law of love— duty to God and duty to man.

Christian charity can no more exist in the human heart without first coming from God than the love of God can exist in the heart without producing that charity. Christ was never in prison; neither did you ever visit him, or feed, or clothe him; yet when done to his people in need of them, the full conditions are met, and you have done these things to him.” — Richmond K. Smoot, Applied Christianity: Who is My Neighbor? (1896)