1 E. Curling, The Transfiguration, 103. 8 M. G. Pearse, Parables and Pictures, 52.
128 EVERLASTING LOVE
Tj Let me link together detached sentences from the Word, that in their associations we may discern what is meant by the depth of the love of God. " The high and lofty One whose name is holy." . . . "He is gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner." " Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God . . . began to wash the disciples' feet." "And one cried with another, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord !"..." Neither do I condemn thee ; go, and sin no more." All these are suggestive of what is meant by the love-depths of our God. It is only the really lofty that can truly reach the really deep. The arm that can reach far upward is the only arm that can reach far down- ward. It is only holy love that can deal with humanity's deepest needs. A low love has no depths of service. Low love is a thing of compromise, and has no dealings with extremes, whether of holiness or of sin. Holy love, crystalline love, goes down and down into human necessity, and is not afraid of the taint. Sun- beams can move among sewage and catch no defilement. The brilliant, holy love of God ministers in the deepest depths of human need.
God's love is deeper than human sorrow. Drop your plummet-line into the deepest sea of sorrow, and at the end of all your soundings, " underneath are the everlasting arms." God's love is deeper than death, and there are multitudes who know how deep grim death can be. " Just twelve months ago," said a near friend of mine a week or two ago, " I dug a deep grave ! " Aye, and I know it was deep enough. But the grave-digger's spade cannot get beneath our Father's love. God's love is deeper than the deepest grave you ever dug ! " And entering into the sepulchre they saw an angel," and you can never dig into any dreary, dreary dwelling of death which is beyond the reach of those white-robed messengers of eternal love. Yes, God's love is deeper than death. " 0 death, where is thy sting ? 0 grave, where is thy victory ? "
And God's love is deeper than sin. Listen to this: "He descended into hell," and He will descend again if you are there. "If I make my bed in hell. Thou art there." "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." "He bore our sin"; then He got beneath it ; down to it and beneath it ; and there is no human wreckage, lying in the ooze of the deepest sea of iniquity, that His deep love cannot reach and redeem. What a Gospel ! However far down, God's love can get beneath it ! *
1 J. H. Jowett, Things that Matter Most, 15.
The New Covenant.
JER.-MAL. — 9
Literature.
Bennett (W. H.), The Book of Jeremiah (Expositor's Bible), 346.
Gillies (J. R.)> Jeremiah : The Man and his Message, 247.
Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermons in Outline, 68.
Liddon (H. P.), Christmastide in St. Paul's, 38.
Macgregor (W. M.), Jesus Christ the Son of God, 27.
Masterman (J. H. B.), The Challenge of Christ, 52.
Ramsay (A.), Studies in Jeremiah, 261.
Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 5.
Southgate (C. M.), in Sermons by the Monday Club, 17th Ser., 60.
Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, ii. (1856), No. 93 ; Metropolitan
Tabernacle Pulpit, xxviii. (1882), No. 1687. Christian World Pulpit, xvi. 369 (H. P. Liddon); lxxx. 269 (E. J.
Barson) ; lxxxiv. 387 (N. H. Marshall). Expositor, 1st Ser., xi. 65 (A. B. Bruce).
130
The New Covenant.
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah : not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt ; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord ; I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it ; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people : and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord : for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord : for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.— Jer. xxxi. 31-34.
1. This is one of the greatest messages that the Old Testament contains. Were we to distinguish degrees of importance by difference of type, then these verses ought to be printed in the boldest lettering, so as to catch every eye. Here is a prophecy that foretells Christianity, that anticipates the New Testament. When the prophet delivers this oracle, he speaks as a Christian born long before the time. When we look on all that is best and most distinctive in the Christian faith, we are entitled to say, " This day is this Scripture fulfilled in our ears." It was of these words our Lord was thinking when He instituted the sacrament of the Supper, and said, " This cup is the new covenant in my blood." That New Covenant was neither more nor less than the , New Covenant of which Jeremiah prophesied. And the whole Epistle to the Hebrews, which labours to show to half-converted Jews the vast superiority of Christianity to the religion of their fathers, may be called a sermon on this great text.