God

God is love.—1 John 4:8.

1. It is significant that we have these words not from Jesus but from John. Jesus did not say in so many words, “God is love.” He taught by the inductive method. He said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” John looked at Him, leaned on His breast, stood beside His cross, gazed into His empty tomb, listened to His words when He had risen from the dead, and said “God is love.” He knew, because he had seen Christ. This knowledge of Christ’s character is the primary source of John’s knowledge of God. He leaned on Jesus’ bosom and learned His spirit, and in after years he thought of that spirit as a manifestation of the very life of God. Then he sought for a name for it, and there was no name good enough. He thought of Him who went about doing good; of His self-denial and poverty for man’s sake; of His compassion on the multitude; of His sympathy for the bereaved; of His kindness towards the outcast; of His tears at the grave of Lazarus; of His message of forgiveness to the sin-stricken; of His words such as never man’s sake; of His washing His disciples’ feet; of His death in pity for human sin; of His resurrection into immortality and glory, John thought of all this as setting forth the life of God in its fundamental meanings. He knew what spirit was in Jesus; he knew by what word to characterize His life. He knew that whatever of God’s life was manifest through Jesus of Nazareth was eternally true of the Almighty Father, and he told it all in three sublime and immortal words, “God is love.”

Here, then, we have three words which are three syllables, and they are greater words than all the piled words of the most elaborate dictionary ever constructed. These are the words out of which all the other words come. No man invented these words. They have become so familiar now that we do not know their meaning; but if we could throw ourselves back mentally and spiritually to the right standpoint, we should know that it did not lie within the compass of human genius to invent any of these words. We take the words for granted; we speak the word “God” as if we knew all about it, and the great verb “is,” as if it were one of a dozen verbs of equal merit; and “love,” which the boldest lexicographer has never successfully defined, we roll glibly off our tongue. We have all things in three syllables. Here is the Bible reduced to the smallest possible verbal scale, and yet losing nothing of the stellar glory and the infinite compass of the evolution of the Divine idea.

If I were asked what has most contributed to human progress and human happiness, even as philosophers measure those terms; what it is, more than any other element of knowledge, that has set free the intellect; more than any other principle of conduct, has instructed the conscience; more than any other object of desire, has elevated the affections; I should say unhesitatingly that it is the unveiling of the face of our Father which is in heaven; the revelation, all the more pregnant and influencing from the way in which it was made, that “God is love.”1 [Note: J. Fraser, University Sermons, 288.]

Bengel says: “This brief sentence gave John, even during the mere time he took to write it, more delight than the whole world can impart.” And, indeed, one can well believe it; for, you must remember, John really and deeply cared about God; and if we really care about God and men, this text, if we believe it, will assuage our sorrow, lighten our hearts, and brighten our lives.

You are in perfect health, for instance, and you don’t think about health. You cannot go into ecstasies over such a commonplace thing as health. But some day you go into a hospital—you see long ward after ward filled with sick folk—with pale cheeks, lustreless eyes, sad, anxious faces, young and old, men and women. The light is dim, and as you pass you see they are carrying one poor patient out of the common ward, and you know they are carrying him where he may die alone, without disturbing the others; and then, when you go out into the open air, and the light and shine of the sun, and feel the spring of health in your limbs, the simple thought that you are well thrills you! Health is no longer commonplace, and you thank God that you are not like other men, who are sick, and weak, and dying.

“God is love,” I say.

“Of course!” you say. “How commonplace your sermon is! What a hackneyed text you have taken!”

But look here—look into all old creeds, where God is said to be Cruelty, and Lust, and Caprice. Look into Catholicism, where God is a Burning Anger, kept from destroying the world only by a continual sacrifice. Look into modern philosophy, where God is Force without heart, and Law without pity. Look at your own lives, at the records on the pages of memory, and think of the still fuller entries on the book of judgment. Think of your sins, yea even of your virtues, and as you reflect how bad your worst deeds were, and how poor your best, are you not glad for your own sakes that God is love?1 [Note: J. M. Gibbon, The Gospel of Fatherhood, 11.]

When Mr. Moody built his tabernacle in Chicago, he was so anxious that every one that came there should learn one truth, namely, that “God is love,” and so fearful that some day some preacher might stand in the pulpit and forget to tell the people that God is love, that he had these three words put into gas jets over the pulpit. So every night when the gas was lighted, there it blazed away over the preacher’s head, “God is love.” Whether the preacher told it to the people or not, they could see it for themselves in letters of fire.

One night the tabernacle was lighted but the people had not yet gathered for the evening service. A poor drunkard coming up the street saw the door a little ajar and saw the light, and then stumbled up the steps hoping to find warmth and cheer within. As he pushed the door a little wider, his attention was directed to the sentence in the letters of fire above the pulpit, “God is love.” He turned away, pulled the door to, went down the steps and went up the street muttering, “It is not so. That is not true. God is not love. If God were love, He would love me, and God does not love a miserable wretch like me. It is not true.” But all the time, the words were burning down into his soul, “God is love. God is love.”

After a while he turned about and retraced his steps, entered the church again, and took a seat behind the stove over in the corner. The people gathered and Mr. Moody ascended the platform and began to preach. All the time that Mr. Moody preached, the man was weeping in the corner. Mr. Moody’s quick eye caught sight of him, and at the close of the service he hurried to him and sat down beside him. “What are you crying about, my friend?” he said gently. “What was it in the sermon that touched you?” The man replied, “There was nothing in the sermon that touched me. I did not hear a word of your sermon.” “Well, what was it then that touched you?” asked Mr. Moody. “That sentence,” pointing to the words in fire, “that sentence, ‘God is love.’ ” Mr. Moody opened his Bible and showed the man from the Bible how God loved him, and how Jesus was an all-sufficient Saviour for all who take Him. The man listened and accepted Christ, and went away that night a saved Man 1:1 [Note: R. A. Torrey.]

Love came to me when I was young;

He brought me songs, he brought me flowers;

Love wooed me lightly, trees among,

And dallied under scented bowers;

And loud he carolled: “Love is King!”

For he was riotous as spring,

And careless of the hours,—

When I was young.

Love lingered near when I grew old;

He brought me light from stars above;

And consolations manifold;

He fluted to me like a dove;

And Love leaned out of Paradise,

And gently kissed my faded eyes,

And whispered, “God is love,”—

When I grew old.2 [Note: Francis H. Williams.]

I

Love in the Being of God

1. Love is the central emotion in God.—When the Apostle tells us that God is love, he means to say, not that God has this attribute and no other, and not that He has this attribute paramount to others; for, as the attributes of any mind must partake of the character of the mind which exercises them, so the attributes of God must partake of the essence of God, and be in all aspects, therefore, infinite and Divine; none, therefore, can be more than infinite, none less than Divine. Each attribute—His truth, His power, His wisdom, and the like—must stand on the same footing as His love, and be equally great and glorious. But, by the expression “God is love,” St. John evidently wishes to convey to us the idea that love is the great motive power of the Divine Being. Love is that which shapes and guides all His attributes; so that each is manifested under the working of love, and each directed to the securing of love.

All God’s attributes are inflections or phases of love. Love is not one of His attributes; it is all of them. His holiness is the wholeness of His love. His righteousness is the eternal conformity of His life to love. His justice is love looking out on the great mass of His creatures. His beneficence is love showing itself in deeds which we recognize as helpful. His pity is love toward the sorrowing. His mercy is love toward the sinful. But whether He be merciful or beneficent or just or righteous or holy, He is love.1 [Note: Lyman Abbott.]

The old Greeks, whose civilization developed along the line of architecture, and painting, and the decorative arts, said, “God is beauty.” The Romans, led by the Cæsars on a hundred battlefields to victory, until they boasted that the Roman eagles never turned backward, said, “God is strength.” The Jew, inheriting from Moses, the great law-giver, said, “God is law.” It was not until John had laid his head upon the Saviour’s bosom and communed with Jesus Christ that any man was able to say with confident heart, “God is love.”2 [Note: L. A. Banks.]

2. Love implies fellowship.—Love means an outpouring; it cannot exist without an object. Strictly, there cannot be self-love, for selfishness is the negation of love. It is no answer to say that the capacity to love was in God before by creation He found an object for His love. The capacity to love is not love; it does but accentuate the void. Is it conceivable that through an eternity the Infinite Perfection should have been yearning in unsatisfied longing for something to love? In the light of the Trinity, however, the difficulty vanishes. In the love of the Eternal which Jesus reveals to us there is the fulness of life, perfect fellowship, infinite and eternal love. Love is the very constitution and law of God’s Being. God only exists as a threefold relation of lover, beloved, and love—the Father for ever outpouring Himself in love to the Son; the Son for ever in complete self-surrender returning that love to the Father; the Spirit ceaselessly uniting Father and Son, Himself the Bond of love.

The Love of the Trinity is nameless: human tongue has no words to express it; no creature may inquisitively look into its eternal depths. It is the great and impenetrable mystery. We listen to its music and adore it; but when its glory has passed through the soul the lips are still unable adequately to describe any of its features. God may loose the tongue so that it may shout and sing to the praise of eternal Love, but the intellect remains powerless.

Before God created heaven and earth with all their inhabitants, the Eternal Love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit shone with unseen splendour in the Divine Being. Love exists, not for the sake of the world, but for God’s sake; and when the world came into existence, Love remained unchanged; and if every creature were to disappear, it would remain just as rich and glorious as ever. Love exists and works in the Eternal Being apart from the creature; and its radiation upon the creature is but a feeble reflection of its being.

Love is not God, but God is love; and He is sufficient to Himself to love absolutely and for ever. He has no need of the creature, and the exercise of His love did not begin with the creature whom He could love, but it flows and springs eternally in the Love-life of the Triune God. God is love; its perfection, Divine beauty, real dimensions, and holiness are not found in men, not even in the best of God’s children, but scintillate only around the Throne of God.1 [Note: A. Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, 515.]

There is a pretty story of St. Augustine. He had announced to his people that he would explain the doctrine of the Trinity next Lord’s Day. In the week, as he walked by the shore pondering his discourse, he came upon a child at play. The lad had dug a hole in the sand, and was running backwards and forwards with his bucket, bringing water from the sea and pouring it into the hole which he had dug. “Why do you do that, my lad?” said the Saint. “I am trying to empty the sea.” “Silly child,” said St. Augustine, “you can never empty the sea with your little bucket.” “As well may I try,” said the child, “as you seek to explain with your finite mind the infinite Being of God.”2 [Note: C. Hepher, The Revelation of Love, 38.]

II

Love in Creation

Love has been active everywhere. Love built heaven. Love made earth. Love made hell; and its pains are the measure of God’s love for goodness, its flames are love on fire. He “overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea: for his mercy endureth for ever.” And by the kiss or the rod; by caress or correction; by “gentle gales from the wings of angels that fan His Mercy-seat,” or by hot blasts from the burning marl of hell; by the blood of Christ, and pleading love, or by fire and brimstone of punitive love, God seeks to overthrow all evil in all men and beings, and will not rest until the Holy Spirit shall say of the New Creation, “It is finished”: for “God is love.”

1. Love created the world.—Why did God create the world for which He had no need? You might ask the same question as the builder cuts down the tree, the sculptor carves the marble, or the painter daubs the canvas. For answer to your question you must wait till you see the use made of the productions. You will then know the end and will be able to find the reason. The builder sees the mast of a ship in the growing tree, the painter a landscape on the canvas; in the marble cold the sculptor sees an angel’s form. God saw the end before He began; and we can find the reason of His action only in the use He makes of His creation. The end will give the motive of His action. Nothing that is incidental will answer for His work. If new emotions fill His heart, as one by one His works are done, that is but incidental, and not the object of His toil. The work was not done to create the emotion; neither was the emotion solely on account of the work, but because of its adaptability to the far-off end. The unborn man was in His thought as day by day “God saw that it was good.”

There are many books in God’s world, on every page of which is inscribed, “He is love.” The beauty of the landscape, the wonderful provision for every creature’s want, which meets them every moment, the happiness of family life, each man’s own little history, the inner fountain of pleasant thoughts that plays in the bosom, the exquisite adjustment of providences, the tenderness and care of an Almighty Father, which we can trace everywhere, the patience of that Father’s pity, our bright and happy homesteads, our full cups—they all teach it, but they teach it only to those who have learnt it first in a higher school.1 [Note: James Vaughan.]

God is love—the heavens tell it

Through their glorious orbs of light,

In that glad and golden language

Speaking to us, day and night,

Their great story,

God is love, and God is might!

And the teeming earth rejoices

In that message from above;

With ten thousand thousand voices,

Telling back from hill and grove,

Her glad story,

God is might, and God is love!

2. Love is the bedrock of the moral universe.—Science has told us of a struggle for existence in which the race is to the swift and the battle to the strong, and God gives the verdict to the stronger. History has told us that God is on the side that has the heaviest battalions. Political Economy has told us that the law of supply and demand is final in trade, and that an enlightened self-interest is the highest motive which commerce can know. Students of Nature, not a few, have called our attention to the truth that God sends not only the grateful warmth of the sun, but also the parching heat; not only the cooling shower, but also the tempest. But deeper students of Nature will not let us rest till we discern that storm and sunshine, calm and cloud are all manifestations of solar energy; that if one is good, the other cannot be fully bad. There is not, even if we deify natural forces, one God of sun, and another of wind, since sun and wind manifest the same power. To say that we live in a universe is to unify our conception of the underlying thought of creation, and more careful students of history and of science have a better word to say than that the world is a strife and a tangle. It cannot be wholly bad, and it cannot be mixed; it is then good, though sometimes our faith must stand on tiptoe to reach the truth—the world is good, and life is good, and “God is love.”

Is there not such a thing as the struggle for the existence of others? Did you ever start a quail from her nest, and follow her as she flew low and with only one wing, almost within your reach? Did you follow her till you were well away from the nest, and then see the helpless wing come into play, and the mother bird fly cheerfully back to the nest? Some mother quails have lost their lives in that way, no doubt, but they have saved the nest. What has made the quail a persistent type? Strength? Yes. Ability to fly? Yes. Colour like the turf and dead grass? Yes. But these are not all. Your list of forces will not be complete till you include love, love that can imperil its life for love’s sake. Did you ever see a little mother hen spread her feathers and give defensive battle to a hawk? Sometimes by the courage that love gives she actually drove the hawk away; sometimes she laid down her life for her brood; in either case it was love that saved the little ones. The love of the mother was stronger than the hunger of the hawk. So Nature gives eloquent witness to the power of the law of love.1 [Note: W. E. Barton.]

When Mungo Park was in Africa, he felt at one time very weary and alone, and he thought he should perish. He lay down on the ground, and he saw a little bit of moss. Did you ever examine a little bit of moss? It is so beautiful. And Mungo Park saw this beautiful little bit of moss; and it said to him, “God is love”; and he was not afraid, for he saw, even in the little bit of moss, “God is love.”2 [Note: James Vaughan.]

O plenteous grace that nerved my soul to raise

So fixt a look on the Eternal Light,

That I achieved the object of my gaze!

Within its depth I saw that by the chains

Of love, in one sole volume was confined

Whate’er the universal world contains;—

Substance, and accident—their properties,

Together in such wondrous manner joined,

One glimpse is all my utmost skill supplies.

Methinks I saw the universal mould

Of all this globe;—such thrilling ecstasy

Expands my heart, as I the sight unfold.3 [Note: Dante, Paradiso, xxxiii. 58 (trans. by Wright).]

III

Love in Christ

1. It was in Christ that love reached its full manifestation.—Christ was not the originator of love. He simply disclosed it to the world. You do not say that dawn makes the sun? Nor that the incoming ships cause the flow of the tide? Nor that the flowers create the summer? No! The dawn is the sign that the sun is coming; it is caused by the sun. The ships are carried in by the tide, and only reveal its current. The summer makes the flowers, and they declare its glory. Why, then, do you say that Christ made, or bought, or in any way procured the love of God, when it was God’s love that sent Him forth on His mission? The love of God has no shallows. It is equally deep everywhere—Calvary deep wherever you try it. As far as God’s love is concerned, the Cross might be placed in Genesis as well as in John, in Leviticus as well as in Luke.

Especially in Christ is there fathomless beauty and glory. St. Paul’s heart was overwhelmed with loving enthusiasm as he thought of his privilege of preaching “The Unsearchable Riches of Christ.” The more we ponder these riches, the richer will our own love be. And so it happened in the case of the poor native dying in the Mengo Medical Mission in Uganda. The Missionary asked him if he knew who Jesus Christ was, and he received the beautiful reply, “He is a strong bridge over which I pass through the gate.”1 [Note: J. A. Clapperton, Culture of the Christian Heart, 64.]

Young Scott, the son of Dr. Scott of Greenock, is with us. He is a highly gifted man. May the mighty God bless him, and strengthen him for the work that he may be called to! He preached last night in Dundee. There was one thing which he said upon the universality of the love of God to sinners which I shall repeat to you. When God was manifested in Christ, in the man Christ Jesus, that man fulfilled the whole law, of which the second great division is, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. If there had been any single man upon earth whom He did not love as Himself, He would have been a breaker of the law. But He fulfilled the whole law, and loved every man, as He loved Himself—ay and more; and as He thus fulfilled the law, He said, “He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father”; that is to say, My love to men is the very image of My Father’s love to them.2 [Note: Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen (1800–1840), i. 143.]

2. The love of God finds its free expression in Christ.—“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” His love had been given to men since the creation, but men shut their hearts and contracted their lives, and the love of God had no free course. When Christ came God was glorified in Him.

Robert Browning has an exquisite little poem which he calls “One Word More.” The idea of the poem is this. One of the greatest, perhaps the greatest Italian artist, who is already a painter, feels that there is more in him than painting can express, and from sheer necessity he takes to sculpture. Not that he gives up painting; but he adds sculpture to it, in order to relieve his own soul, that he might put into marble what he could not put on the canvas. Browning compares himself to that artist in addressing the wife whom he loved with such adoring self-abandonment. He had addressed her in verse, but what verse could express the love that was his? And he longs for some other art than poetry to tell the one word more that was in him. And so here. God had served man, created a perfect home for man—served his intellect, quickened it by the problems which He had set him to solve; but He still needed the “one word more” to tell all that was in Him. None of these things could tell His love—tell the depth of it; the necessity that man was to Him.1 [Note: J. M. Jones, The Cup of Cold Water, 148.]

Why comes this fragrance on the summer breeze,

The blended tribute of ten thousand flowers,

To me, a frequent wanderer ’mid the trees

That form these gay, though solitary bowers?

One answer is around, beneath, above;

The echo of the voice, that God is Love!

Why bursts such melody from tree and bush,

The overflowing of each songster’s heart,

So filling mine, that it can scarcely hush

Awhile to listen, but would take its part?

’Tis but one song I hear where’er I rove,

Though countless be the notes, that God is Love!

Why leaps the streamlet down the mountain’s side,

Hastening so swiftly to the vale beneath,

To cheer the shepherd’s thirsty flock, or glide

Where the hot sun has left a faded wreath,

Or, rippling, aid the music of the grove?

Its own glad voice replies, that God is Love!

In starry heavens, at the midnight hour,

In ever-varying hues at morning’s dawn,

In the fair bow athwart the falling shower,

In forest, river, lake, rock, hill, and lawn,

One truth is written: all conspire to prove,

What grace of old reveal’d, that God is Love!

Nor less this pulse of health, far glancing eye,

And heart so moved with beauty, perfume, song,

This spirit, soaring through a gorgeous sky,

Or diving ocean’s coral caves among,

Fleeter than darting fish or startled dove;

All, all declare the same, that God is Love!

Is it a fallen world on which I gaze?

Am I as deeply fallen as the rest,

Yet joys partaking, past my utmost praise,

Instead of wandering forlorn, unblest?

It is as if an unseen spirit strove

To grave upon my heart, that God is Love!

Yet would’st thou see, my soul, this truth display’d

In characters which wondering angels read

And read, adoring; go, imploring aid

To gaze with faith, behold the Saviour bleed!

Thy God, in human form! O, what can prove,

If this suffice thee not, that God is Love?

Cling to His cross; and let thy ceaseless prayer

Be, that thy grasp may fail not! and, ere long,

Thou shalt ascend to that fair Temple, where

In strains ecstatic an innumerous throng

Of saints and seraphs, round the Throne above,

Proclaim for evermore, that God is Love!1 [Note: Thomas Davis.]

3. In Christ love stooped to infinite sacrifice.—Nowhere else but on the Cross could it fully utter itself. In Christ the Divine love comes to us, and, mounting, towers far above any conception of love the world has ever known before. The friend dies for the foe, the pure for the impure, the Creator for the creature. Up and up it mounts, until the highest peak is reached that human life offers footing to. The Divine love plants itself upon the cruel cross, returning love for hatred, a prayer for a blow, a crown for a cross, and with bleeding body and breaking heart the God-Man gives Himself for us. If the cross of Jesus speaks at all it speaks in tones of love. In Genesis God works for His innocent child; in Christ He suffers for a guilty one. If the gift is love what can the giver be? No one but a God of love could send the loving Christ.

O Blessed well of love, O flower of Grace,

O glorious Morning-starre, O lampe of light,

Most lively image of Thy Father’s Face,

Eternall King of glorie, Lord of might,

Meeke lambe of God before all worlds behight,

How can we Thee requite for all this good?

Or what can prize that Thy most precious blood?1 [Note: Spenser.]

IV

God’s Love in Human Life

1. God’s love is personal: it is not mere compassion for the multitude; it is an infinite affection for the individual. The sun cannot shine upon the just, and not upon the unjust, for the sun is light, and it cannot help shining. God cannot love one and withhold His love from another, for God is love, and He cannot help loving. He loves us when we are good; and when we are bad He loves us still. He loves some with the love of pity, and others with the love of pride; He loves some with the love of compassion, and others with the love of complacency. But He loves us all, and will never cease from loving us, no matter how far we stray from Him. If some are lost, it is because they will become so estranged from good, so loveless, that God’s love no longer affects them; but it will still be theirs, and will follow them even down to doom.

God’s love is like His sunlight, diffused throughout the heaven, catching the heights of the hills and crowning them with ruddy gold and clothing them in purple. So it seems to us an easy and a natural thing for God to love some people; outstanding men and women whose goodness might make them dear to Him. But this is not all that the sun does. It climbs higher that it may creep lower—down the hill-sides further and further, until it lifts the mists of the valley and covers the meadows with its glory, and kisses the daisy and fills its cup with gold and puts energy and strength into its very heart. God loves the good, the true, the pure, but His love rises higher that it may come down lower; and He loves me—me. I can wrap this love of His about me and claim it all as my own.2 [Note: M. G. Pearse, Short Talks for the Times, 15.]

We are told of a painter who chose to remain unknown; the man of genius, the born painter, who refused to paint because men would not understand, would not properly appreciate his work. He shrank, as every sensitive man would shrink, from having his work bought by vulgar men, to be hung up in their galleries or on their dining-room walls, not because they cared for art, but because it was the fashionable thing to patronize art, and prove your wealth by the pictures with which you lined your walls. He shuddered at the thought. He would never degrade the genius that was in him by pandering to vulgar wealth. He would go on holding fellowship with his own soul’s visions in the soul’s private sanctuary; but he would not demean himself by selling his soul to the man who merely could pay the highest price for it. But that is not the noblest genius. Real genius must express itself, even for its own sake. May we not say that God must express Himself for His own sake? God has poured out the wealth of His redemption. We may reject it or receive it: God must give it. God must sing the song of His own heart. He wrote it in the lives of heroes; spoke it from the lips of prophets; told the wealth of it in the life and death of Jesus. He has been telling it unweariedly through the ages. Men have rejected it, scorned it, treated it with contempt. It matters not; to God to tell Himself was a necessity, for “God is love.”1 [Note: J. M. Jones, The Cup of Cold Water, 162.]

2. God’s love is redemptive and persists in spite of our unworthiness.—A man had fallen into a deep dark pit, and lay at its miry bottom, groaning and utterly unable to move. Confucius, passing by, approached the edge of the pit, and said, “Poor fellow, I am sorry for you; why were you such a fool as to get in there? If you ever get out do not get in again.” The man said, “I cannot get out.” That is Confucianism. A Buddhist priest next came by, and said, “Poor fellow, I am pained to see you down there. I think that if you could climb up two-thirds of the way or even half, I could reach you and lift you out.” But the man was utterly helpless and unable to rise. That is Buddhism. Next the Saviour came by, and, hearing his cries, went to the brink of the pit, reached down and laid hold of the man, brought him up and said, “Go and sin no more.” That is Christianity. God in Christ takes man from the horrible pit and the miry clay, and sets his feet upon the rock, and establishes his goings, and puts a song of praise into his mouth.

There is a story of a lad who was devoted to his father, and who stole some money from his employer’s till. He was detected in the act, sent to prison, and brought a stain upon the family name. Before serving his sentence, he was allowed to see his sister, who came to visit him in gaol.

“What does mother say?” asked the lad.

“Mother washes her hands of you,” was the reply.

“What do the others say?”

“They never mention your name.”

And then came the question, “What does father say?”

And the answer was, “Father sends his love and a kiss.”

This reached home as nothing else did. Is it not a parable of the All-Father’s love? Man fell and went wrong; was—he always is—detected; brought a stain on the family name; and to man, just as he was (“while we were yet sinners”), came the message, “Father sends you His Love, and a Kiss.” Jesus was the Love of the Father, and an old and beautiful name for the Holy Ghost was “the Kiss of God,” the reconciling Power which brings pardon and peace to poor prodigal humanity.1 [Note: E. E. Holmes, The Days of the Week, 45.]

Love, love that once for all did agonize,

Shall conquer all things to itself! if late

Or soon this fall, I ask not nor surmise,—

And when my God is waiting I can wait!2 [Note: Dora Greenwell.]

3. God’s love is a wise love, a watchful love, a faithful love: there is nothing it will not do for us, except wrong; there is nothing it will not endure for us, except sin; and there is nothing it will not be very careful to spare us, in order to turn us from the evil of our way. “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” If we are chastened, therefore, it is not for His pleasure, but for our profit, “for what son is there whom his father chasteneth not?” As the sun calls forth the very clouds that hide his face for a season till the tender rain falls that brightens the earth anew, so also His love, at times, may darken the face of heaven to us till the bitter-sweet tears of repentance restore the light to us again. But through all and in all His love abides unchanged, and is at the root of our sorrows as well as our joys, often hidden, but never absent, the same yesterday and to-day and forever.

We see Jesus Christ, without losing His belief in God’s love, stripped of everything except being what He was and doing what He believed it His work to do. His character and His service, these were left to Him, and in His calling to these He recognized that God loved Him. Whatever came to Him, however painful it was, still did not contradict God’s love, if it enabled Him to finish His work. Even His death was the cup which His Father gave Him to drink, and though it was bitter, it was yet a love-token. God’s love to Jesus was more seen in giving Him that cup to drink, that so He might be the Saviour of men, than it would have been in snatching Him from the brink of death into heaven, His work all unfinished. We are taught by the life of Jesus Christ to see God’s love not in the gifts of fortune, or in health and outward happiness, but in the supreme gift of making us sons of God, and giving us the work of sons to do.1 [Note: P. J. Maclagan, The Gospel View of Things, 175.]

I was standing not long ago by a child’s sick-cot; and if there is any sight which it is hard to look upon, it is that of the little one, to whom it is all such a mystery, racked and tortured with pain. But the brave little heroine whispered, “Father, give me your hand”; and holding her father’s hand, though riddled with pain, she never moaned. And so I. I do not know what others may not be able to do; I criticize no one, think hard thoughts of no one; I only say that in my bewilderments, sorrows, heartaches, struggles, I cannot rest upon ideas, visions, aspirations, strivings. I say, “Father, give me Thine hand.” I can be patient and brave then. Father! Thy name is Love.2 [Note: J. M. Jones, The Cup of Cold Water, 142.]

4. God’s love is the key to the mystery of pain and sorrow.—This epigrammatic sentence fits all graves, it fits all cemeteries; it is the word that is written on the portals of the churchyard, “God is love.” I have seen a strong man reel over his son’s grave as if he would plunge himself into it, for there was nothing worth living for after that one boy had gone. He was not in a mood to hear any preaching, he was not in a condition to hear even the gentlest tone; he must be watched, we must wait for him; he must feel it like a man before he answers it like a man. It will be no use speaking to him to-day; he sups sorrow; no, he does not sup it, he gulps it, he drains the cup of grief at one great gulp. We must call upon this man to-morrow; we must be remote, we must learn in God’s grace how to touch a wound without hurting it. Next week perhaps we may meet him, and even then we must hold ourselves remote, and yet be near at hand, and when the lull comes, the only sentence the man can bear—and at first he may receive it with unbelief and partial scorn—is, “God is love.” It does not seem like it. No, it does not. I feel inclined to deny it. I do not wonder; your grief is exceeding great; but—God is love. Who says so? I do. On what authority? My own experience; I have dug a grave as deep as you, and I thought just as you are thinking now; I said there are a thousand happy families, and one of the children might have been taken, but I had only one. That was a thousand strokes in one laceration, and I, brother in grief, fellow-mason in tears, I say, God-is-love.1 [Note: J. Parker, The City Temple Pulpit, iii. 239.]

I was at Doulton’s wonderful art works the other day, and saw one superb specimen of art—an illustration of a dream of Dante’s. I was admiring the figure of Beatrice—the exquisite workmanship, the pose and grace of the figure. “Ah,” said the gentleman who was showing it to me, “that has to be fired three times yet; those colours must be made permanent.”2 [Note: J. M. Jones, The Cup of Cold Water, 165.]

5. God’s love is a sufficient guarantee for the future.—Our immortality is a necessity to God. Love cannot let us die. Man is God’s child. Therefore God has set His heart upon him, and visited him every day. In the house of the rich man there are many treasures—rare books, costly pictures, splendid marbles, shining gems; but the little child who bears his image and likeness, and who looks up into his face with smiling love, and who answers to his affections with tender heart, is the dearest jewel of them all. And there is no man or woman who would not see the great house blotted out by fire, and every treasure absolutely destroyed rather than that harm should come to one hair of that golden head. In the great house of God there are many treasures and jewels—stars and planets, suns and moons; but above them all God values His human child.

The sole hope of man is God. The sole hope of retaining God is in the absoluteness and the universality of the Divine love. His righteousness must be the righteousness of love. His wrath must be the holy wrath of love. His retribution must be the recompense of love. They are all determined, limited, described, if God is love, by love. If God is an eternal being, and if God is love, then the love of God is nothing less than an eternal thing. If God is universal and in communication with every human soul, then, when you bring these things together, it yields the truth that the eternal love of God extends eternally to every saint and sinner of the human race. There is no other issue, if it is true that God is love. The love of the Eternal for every human soul is an eternally enduring love. Its universality in space and time means its eternal endurableness, not only for poor and rich, for white and black, but for every sinner as well as for every saint, for the child who is the prodigal in the far country as well as for the brother obedient in the home. The door of hope is never closed by the Father’s hand.

Yea God is love! and this I trust,

Though summer is over and sweetness done,

That all my lilies are safe, in the dust,

As they were in the glow of the great, glad sun.

Yea God is love, and love is might!

Mighty as surely to keep as to make;

And the sleepers, sleeping in death’s dark night,

In the resurrection of life shall wake.

In Watts’ picture entitled “Love Triumphant,” Time and Death have companioned together throughout the ages; and they are at length overthrown and lie prostrate at the feet of Love. They appear as two vague figures wrapped in clouds; the man half recumbent, the woman lying prone on the ground; time in the form of the woman illumined with a bright light; death in the form of a man overshadowed by his own form, and knowing nothing of the secrets that are hidden in his stern keeping. Love appears as a mystic angel with hands outstretched and mighty wings lifted upwards, and a waving robe blown across his body by a strong wind, and clouds of glory round about him, mounting into the empyrean.1 [Note: H. Macmillan, G. F. Watts, 258.]

The manifestation of unselfish affection, or even the expression of it, is a token of a higher nature in man and a presage of immortality. Where there is a love stronger than death there must be a soul stronger also.2 [Note: John Ker, Thoughts for Heart and Life, 7.]

God

Literature

Banks (L. A.), Sermons which have Won Souls, 429.

Barton (G. A.), The Roots of Christian Teaching, 15.

Campbell (R. J.), A Truth for To-day, 53.

Carter (T. T.), The Spirit of Watchfulness, 206, 218.

Cooper (T. J.), Love’s Unveiling, 1.

Deshon (G.), Sermons for the Ecclesiastical Year, 254.

Drummond (J.), Spiritual Religion, 115.

Fowler (G. H.), Things Old and New, 29.

Fraser (J.), University Sermons, 288.

Gibbon (J. M.), The Gospel of Fatherhood, 1, 33.

Illingworth (J. R.), Sermons Preached in a College Chapel, 130.

Jeffs (H.), The Art of Exposition, 243.

Jones (J. M.), The Cup of Cold Water, 155.

Lewis (E. W.), Some Views of Modern Theology, 83.

Macfarland (C. S.), The Infinite Affection, 23.

Maclagan (P. J.), The Gospel View of Things, 165.

McLean (A.), Where the Book Speaks, 200.

Macleod (D.), The Sunday Home Service, 9.

Mauro (P.), Love and Light, 3.

Moore (A. L.), God is Love, 1.

Moule (H. C. G.), Christ is All, 149.

Moule (H. C. G.), From Sunday to Sunday, 123.

Parker (J.), City Temple Pulpit, iii. 233.

Pearse (M. G.), Short Talks for the Times, 1, 10.

Smith (W. C.), Sermons, 1.

Stockdale (F. B.), The Divine Opportunity, 25.

Story (R. H.), Creed and Conduct, 156.

Westcott (B. F.), Historic Faith, 29.

Wheeler (W. C.), Sermons and Addresses, 125.

Wilberforce (B.), Feeling after Him, 105.

Wilberforce (B.), Speaking Good of His Name, 197,

Examiner, Aug. 20, 1903, p. 180 (Jowett).