Then Jehovah makes answer :
Again will I build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of
Israel : Again shalt thou take thy tabrets and go forth in the dances
of them that make merry; Again shalt thou plant vineyards upon the mountains of
Samaria; while they that plant shall enjoy the fruit.1
2. But in a still deeper sense the meaning is that those who are afar from God in spirit will be heard and helped by Him at the first instant of their turning towards Him again. The saying is in substance almost exactly the same as that immortal utter- ance of the Master in the parable of the Prodigal Son, " When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." It is not that God is a great way off, but that we in spirit may be a great way off from the apprehension of His eternal holiness and truth. But the grace of God takes advantage of every smallest opportunity to find entrance to the soul. " For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard." The faintest motion of our spirits Godward brings Him to our assist- ance. There may be very little in us for His goodness to take hold of, but such as it is He makes use of it. Those desolate Jews who lay in tears by the waters of Babylon were scarcely conscious of any change in their spiritual condition beyond the fact that they had suffered; they had been tried in the fire; their worldly delights had been rudely and cruelly swept away from them, but they could not yet have been capable of very much in the way of heavenly-mindedness. Nevertheless, says the prophet, God grasped at the little they had and gave Himself to increase it. It is the same with us. When everything is going well with us in the outer world we may be far from the Kingdom
1 H. W. Battle.
n8 EVERLASTING LOVE
of Heaven, but when trouble overtakes us our thoughts turn more readily to God and things eternal.
1{ During my absence I discovered the fact that love vanquishes distance, and — I think I may say it reverently — that love vanquishes death. I seemed to see it as a network of golden filaments, invisible to the selfish eye, but holding together the whole world. Moreover, India showed to me, much more clearly than I ever gathered before I went, the lovelessness of men when they have not heard or have not believed that God is Love.
Religion there is fear, not love ; worship there is an attempt to propitiate the baleful and destructive forces in the midst of which we have to live ; love has no part in it. In Mohammedanism, which has taken a fifth of India under its leadership and inspired them with its ideal, there is only submission to the Supreme Authority, but no love. I came back, therefore, as you can imagine, with quite a new apprehension of the meaning of the words of this text; and I wonder whether I ever could have learned the full meaning of that word apart from the experiences of the past few months.1
3. The crowning glory of the Christian religion, the sum of all its glories, is its God. He is one ; He is personal ; He is self- existent, almighty, eternal; He is holy, wise, loving and good. Fairbairn states that the transcendent moment for man, the moment of supreme promise and of grandest hope, was when the idea of a moral deity entered his heart, when all the energies of religion came to be moral energies for the making of moral men. " The moment when gravitation, navigation, the secrets of the sea, or the stars, or the earth, were discovered had neither singly nor all combined equal or even approximate significance for man. Take from him this religion steeped in morality, made living by the moral character of its God, and you will leave him without the grandest energy working for God and peace and progress that ever came into his history or into his heart."
" At heart Christianity is simply a revelation of a perfect God, doing the work of perfect love and holiness for His creatures and transforming men into His own likeness, so that they will do the work of love and holiness towards their fellows." He is the universal Father, the giver of every good gift and every perfect gift. It is in Him that we live and move and have our being.
1 R. F. Horton.
JEREMIAH xxxi. 3 119
He is interested in the welfare of every child made in His image, and makes all things work together for his good. " His glory is to diffuse happiness, and fill up the silent places of the universe with voices that speak out of glad hearts."
Tf The greatest of the philosophers of Greece did but sum up the belief of antiquity when he put into the mouth of Phaedrus the words : " Love is a mighty god, and wonderful among gods and men, but especially wonderful in his birth. For he is the eldest of the gods, which is an honour to him ; and a proof of his claim to this honour is, that of his parents there is no memorial ; neither poet nor prose-writer has ever affirmed that he had any." 1