I cannot go Where Universal Love smiles not around, Sustaining all yon orbs and all their suns; From seeming evil still educing good, And better thence again, and better still, In infinite progression.1
1 James Thomson.
124 EVERLASTING LOVE
3. To the Divine love there is absolutely no end. — Never having begun, it will never terminate, but will last as long as God Himself shall live ; for throughout the eternity which is His lifetime He never ceases to be Himself, and He is love. We have in His love, therefore, a guarantee not only for our present but for our future welfare. Never can we reach a point in our existence in which this love will not encircle and provide for us. When we come to die, He will love us as much in dying as He has loved us while we lived. When we appear at His judgment-seat, He will love us as much as when He gave Christ to die for us ; through all eternity He will love us as much as He has ever done.
Tf To a friend who was experiencing a heavy sorrow, Dr. Martineau wrote, " Often the love of God is hid — passes behind the cloud and leaves us with a cold shudder of alarm, as if it were not there. But the Divine realities do not depend on our apprehension of them ; the eclipse of our vision makes no differ- ence to their shining, except to us. The Infinite Love abides behind, and waits till we return to it, and the intercepting veil falls away. At times, I think, when the mists of fear and distrust gather round the heart, it is even better to forget Him till He finds us again, and say : ' I will possess my soul in patience,' than to accuse either Him or oneself of deserting a relation which is suspended, it may be, only to be more closely bound." x
III.
Love as Lovingkindness. "Therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee."
1. Here again is an alternative rendering. It might be, as the margin of the Eevised Version has it, " I have continued loving- kindness unto thee." But the expression as it stands is truer to the facts. The profound idea which it enshrines is that, despite appearances, the afflictions of Israel have all been the instruments of God's love, means whereby He has been drawing His people towards Himself and towards a higher destiny than they knew. The sublime declaration thus made is that God draws His children by kindness even when it seems most like cruelty. It is almost
1 The Life and Letters of James Martineau, i. 450.
JEREMIAH xxxi. 3 125
audacious in its defiance of probabilities as judged from the standpoint of the natural man. Jeremiah calmly tells his con- temporaries that all the ruin, woe, and devastation through which they were at the moment passing was a mode of the loving- kindness of God. One can hardly wonder that they refused to believe him, for anything more unlike the evidence of their senses it would have been difficult to find. We shall never reach the heart of the mystery of earthly misery and wretchedness by any exercise of the mind, but only by development of soul. For here is an amazing paradox — that the very thing which to the wisdom of this world is the most conclusive demonstration that there is no Divine love is that wherein the spiritual mind discerns it most clearly.
True love is not mere benevolence, it is a burning fire, a passionate eagerness to possess the souls of those who are loved. Therefore it is that the perfect love of God embraces what in our poor earthly language we term the wrath of God against all unrighteousness of men and also the grief of the Holy Spirit at man's ingratitude, as where it is written " it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." There is no contradiction between those two great texts, " God is love " and " Our God is a consuming fire," for the Love Divine is a Consuming Fire, which warms, lightens, and quickens all whose nature will receive it, but burns up all the wood, hay, stubble which cannot receive it. And so when the sword flashes forth in terrible judgment, the Hand behind the cloud that wields it is the Hand of Love.
T[ You see the child running in from the garden full of tears, and saying, " Something has hurt me." On examination it is found that a thorn is in one of his fingers. Then the gentlest of hands will endeavour to extract it. When she is doing so the child will cry out, " Oh, mother, you hurt me." Ah, it is not the mother that hurts, but the thorn. When God takes out the thorn, we think that He hurts us. Not so, it is the thorn. Even God cannot take sin out of the heart without its giving pain. " Woe is me ; who will deliver me from this body of death ? " There are trials and disappointments, there are crosses and burdens, and we feel them keenly. God is then extracting the thorns. But in all His dealings His tender mercy is over all His works. Everywhere, and at all times, it is His lovingkindness}