Had it been left us to con

eyes, and our hands shall handle him. jecture what that impersonation of love should be! There might have risen up before our mind a sacred, tender, Form, bending the heavens, outshining the stars, so august as to fill our souls with admiration, so strange as to smite them with awe. The love would want definiteness still. We should essay to master our conception in vain. But in Immanuel, love shades all the glory and softens all the magnificence until it is attempered into an unutterable sweetness, an infinite grace,-yet perfectly human, human in its habit of indulgence and manner of exercise, human in its circumstances and conditions, human in its signs and features, warming the human heart, suffusing the human countenance, to be heard in the human sigh, to be marked in the human tear! Yet is He the Holy One, and the Just. We know why we may call Him good. The incarnation represents to us that God is love,— causing the essential and the spiritual to take shape and act which may address our humblest sense and move our simplest feeling!

But the love of Christ passeth knowledge. It proves itself in the mighty deed which was the end and motive of his incarnation. He came to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. He loved us and gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice unto God. This atoning death is the climax of infinite love. "Hereby perceive we love, the love," what love can do, what the love which we now review has done, "because He laid down his life for us. It is the crisis, the exhaustion, the triumph, of love; love to death, love stronger than death. But that love at Calvary not only culminates in its meridian and burns in its noon, it seems greater in the qualities of moral excellence than those by which hitherto it was known. See the penitent, the convert, the worshipper, as they bow around the Cross! It is the Love of God which is the power that binds them. But how awful is this love in their esteem! They trifle not with it. They presume not upon it. They "give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness," they "declare his righteous acts," as well as "glorify him for his mercy." Draw near and read those interwoven inscriptions! "He delighteth in mercy," "the righteous Lord loveth

1 John iii. 16.

righteousness." "God is love," "God is light." Every wondering exclamation is rising there! "Who is a strong Lord like unto Thee?" "Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, glorious in holiness ?" "Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity and passeth by transgression ?"

The Love of God in the gift, the humanity, and the sacrifice, of Jesus Christ, stands not apart from efficient results. There is no scheme of good but it avails to uphold and operates to secure.

Contemplate the system of Universal Providence. What very equal happiness, so far as it depends on external circumstances apart from moral tastes, is generally distributed! What an amazing check is put upon evil, and who can calculate that "remainder of wrath" which is "restrained!" What gratifications meet us at every turn! We deny not the admixture of suffering. We sing not only of mercy but of judgment. But it might be one ban and condemnation. It might have been one overflowing scourge. Is the Lord exclusively known by the judgment which he executeth? He is good to all. His sun ariseth on the evil and the good. He is kind to the unthankful. His rain descends upon the just and the unjust. In His hand our breath is, and his are all our ways. He giveth us all things richly to enjoy. In Him we live and move and have our being. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill. He is not far from every one of us. He giveth food to the hungry. The Lord looseth the prisoners. The Lord preserveth the strangers. He bringeth up our life from the grave. He telleth our wanderings. The hairs of our head are all numbered. "Many such things are with him." This kind and watchful superintendence of our race is the procedure of the great Mediatorial principle which the Divine love has introduced and which it wills to honour. This is the reason why the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, and in respect of this is the sinner's respite. A channel is opened in which flow terrestrial streams of no mean joy. There is a fatherhood which the prodigal may yet recall and yet invoke. Vestiges of a fairer state re-appear. The flowers of Eden grow wild among us still. Destruction is held back. Desolation is stayed. The earth is

not given into the hands of the wicked. Christ is head over all things, and though to the church, what advantage do "all things" derive from that headship! The Father hath given Him power over all flesh, and though it is to give eternal life to as many as are given to him, what benefits do "all flesh" acquire from that investiture!

For it is a part of the doctrine of salvation, that it is offered for "all acceptation:" that all are commanded to receive it; that it is adequate for all. This is the testimony of God to man. It opens a new probation to him. It leaves him accountable to make this grace his own. While he is addressed as sinner and rebel, it is to seek and to save that which is lost. Is all thought withdrawn from him? Is he not precious and earnestly desired? “Is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure?" Can we exceed the witness of God? "Who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth." "Who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe." "The Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." Christ is therefore exhibited as "the propitiation for the sins of the whole world." That sacrifice has an infinite sufficiency for all. It has a moral aspect on all. It is an unconditional tender to all. If the sinner perish, it is because he rejects it. To assert that the God who is love is equally pleased with the perdition and the salvation of the sinner,-that each issue is alike agreeable to his will, or that his will in either instance is to be understood in the same sense,-is repugnant to all that he has revealed of himself. "Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? and not that he should return from his ways and live?" He is slow to wrath. Vengeance is his strange work. Is his mercy ever thus described as slow, or its exercise as strange? We are bound thus to consider the Infinite Jehovah from his own most solemn adjurations, by the distinctions which he has himself raised, by the solicitude of heavenly spirits for the sinner's repentance, by the working of evangelic motives leading us to make intercessions for all men, by the exultant strain of prophecy over the vision of a ransomed world. Perverse is every disputing of this. The angel flies through the

midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people. He is on his way! He pursues his track! Is his a too dilated benevolence? Has he stretched too bold a plume? Does he wing too far a flight? Does he make proclamation in too indiscriminate a manner?

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Nevertheless this Love has always secured for itself grateful recipients and holy subjects. "The Lord knoweth them that are his." By his loving-kindness He has drawn them. The love of God is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given unto them. They are a peculiar people. They shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my jewels." He delights in them. He rests in his love towards them. He rejoices over them even with joy and singing. All things are theirs. All things are for their sakes. All things work together for their good. So stable is this love, that they may cast all their burdens upon it: so sympathising is this love, that he who is soothed by it is as one whom his mother comforteth: so does this love identify itself with its objects that, "Thus saith the Lord, he that toucheth them toucheth the apple of his eye." The mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but His loving-kindness shall not depart. And did the Christian stand on the loftiest of those mountains and the firmest of those hills, still might he exclaim while they sunk and crumbled beneath his feet, "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 created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

This is the

And this love assimilates. We are changed into the same image. God is not only love, but "love is of God." "He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God and God in him." immediate reflex influence. "We love Him, because He first loved us." The love of God seems oftentimes in Scripture to possess this double meaning: the love of which he is the object and the source. The same blending is frequently found in our hearts. It is his love, it is our love, and these inseparably unite.

So the fire of the altar and the fire from heaven could not of old be distinguished, the same altar sustained the whole burntoffering, and the flames arose together in a commingled blaze.

It is, too, in this manner that we learn to be followers of God. He is good, always good. Let us honour all men. Let us do good unto all men. Let us eschew evil and do good. Let us love all, as God loves all, in pity. But His is a special love. He is only complacent in what resembles himself. He will only have

a desire for the work of his hands. He does good to them that be good. The love of the brethren is the test of our kindred with them. "If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." "Every one that loveth Him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him." If we would speak of the love of God as an attribute, we could not say, that He is Love. One attribute no more identifies him than another. He leans to none. He is distinguished by none. But Love is as the Crown out of which they all, like costly gems, emit their varied though equal lustre : or as the Firmament where they shine as a glorious and constellated host. In this wise, Love becomes the brightest virtue of the Christian, it is so comprehensive, so impellent, so adorning, the groundwork and the perfection of all: "Now abideth faith, hope, love, but the greatest of these is love."

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Oh that this Breviate were but known! This single word which explains that awful Self-existence who rideth upon the heavens by his name, Jah! It is registered on every tablet of Creation! It is echoed from every dispensation of Providence! It is the motto of Christianity! Every man may see it, man may behold it afar off." Were it but felt by all! Another murmur could not rise. Another heart could not rebel. Variance would cease in a moment throughout the universe. All things would be gathered together in one. Believe it, believe it, ye who hate God, and ye will yield. Herald it, herald it, ye who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, that all may hear and feel it too. May this joyful sound be caught up by every wind! May this infinite pathos light on every spirit! May this bond of perfectness unite God and his creatures for ever!