(1) But any such theory is apart from the supreme fact of revelation. That supreme fact teaches that, the very nature of God being love, His love insistently and persistently goes out to every one of His creatures. If it be asked how can it be possible that a holy God in His omniscience can thus love those who are wrong, incomplete, and unattractive, the answer is that in that omniscience lies largely our explanation of His love. The Eastern shepherd, because he knows each individual sheep of his flock, knows the needs of each individual sheep. Did not Loner- fellow say that it makes no difference who the man is, provided we know him, know his temptations and trials, we are sure to love him ? Is it not also said that no man can hate another if he understands all his failures and distresses ? The prejudice of man towards his fellow is based on man's ignorance of his fellow.
196 THE AMAZING GIFT OF LOVE
Nothing in all this earth so awakens interest in the individual as acquaintance with the individual. The person who is actually hideous as a perfect stranger, as an acquaintance is found to have a past history and a present experience that appeal to pity and even to love. A. C. Benson, in Seen from a College Window, says : " If the dullest person in the world would only put down sincerely what he or she thought about his or her life, about work and love, religion and emotion, it would be a fascinating document."
(2) Beyond God's omniscience lies His realization of the possible development of each one of all His world. He never is ashamed of humanity and He never allows that He has made a mistake in creating humanity. He believes that deep down in every human heart there are possibilities of development into beauty and even into power. Throughout history He has been laying His hand upon all sorts of people in sheepfolds or on ^ farms, in obscure villages, in streets of both small and great cities, and He has summoned them to great riches of character, and to great usefulness of service. Where others look in hopelessness, He looks in profound expectation. To Him humanity has expressed itself in the spirit and conduct of Jesus Christ, and He anticipates that man after man from all sections and tribes of the earth will measure up to the likeness of Christ ; and He rejoices with abundant joy when the Magdalenes are restored, the lepers are healed, the dumb sing, the Wind see, and the dead live again. God is always anticipating glorious transformations of character.
\, 3. Do we realize that, when we say " God loves the world," that really means, as far as each of us is concerned, God loves me ? And just as the whole beams of the sun come pouring down into every eye of the crowd that is looking up to it, so the whole love of God pours down, not upon a multitude, an abstraction, a community, but upon every single soul that makes up that community. He loves us all because He loves each of us. We shall never get all the good of that thought until we translate it, and lay it upon our hearts. It is all very well to say, " Ah yes ! God is love," and it is all very well to say He loves " the world." But what is a great deal better is to say, as St. Paul said, " Who loved me and gave himself for me."
ST. JOHN III. i6 197
^ When we speak of loving a number of individuals — the broader the stream, the shallower it is, is it not? The most intense patriot in England does not love her one ten-thousandth part as well as he loves his own little girl. When we think or ' feel anything about a great multitude of people, it is like looking at a forest. We do not see the trees, we see the whole wood. But that is not how God loves the world. Suppose I said that I loved the people in India, I should not mean by that that I had any feeling about any individual soul of all those dusky millions, but only that I massed them all together, or made what people call a generalization of them. But that is not the way in which God loves. \He Joyes all because He loves each. ! And when we say, "God so loved the world,"'" we have to break up the mass into its atoms, and to think of each atom as being an object of His love. We all stand out in God's love just as we should do to one another's eyes if we were on the top of a mountain-ridge with a clear sunset sky behind us. Each little black dot of the long procession would be separately visible. And we all stand out like that, every man of us isolated, and getting as much of the love of God as if there were not another creature in the whole universe but God and ourselves.^
*[[ After this he seems to have again paid a flying visit to Bathgate, the residence of his brother-in-law; for to this year belongs a beautiful anecdote told of him in that place. A young man belonging to the Church there was very ill, "dying of consumption." Mr. Martin had promised to take his distinguished relative to see this youth, and Irving's time was so limited, that the visit had to be paid about six in the morning, before he started on his further journey. When the two clergymen entered the sick chamber, Irving went up to the bedside, and looking in the face