200 THE AMAZING GIFT OF LOVE
tion of God injected into it, and see how it sounds. "God so loved the world that he gave his beloved Son to abate his own wrath and to placate himself!" Or, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that he might stop hating it." This is simply suicide by self-contradiction ! What folly to talk of bribing to mercy One who is bent by every instinct and prompting of His heart to the exhibition of mercy! Will you bribe a mother to love her child ? ^
(X*^) But there is another false notion of God quite as prevalent in our day as the one just named, and probably quite as mischievous. It arises from the swing of the human heart to the opposite extreme of thought. God is conceived of as a Being whose love is so vast and sweeping as to make punishment at last impossible. Instead of being thought of now as a stern judge who will by no means clear the guilty, He is thought of as a Father too loving to punish, and so full of mercy that it will not be in His heart to deal with men according to any rigid standard of justice. But this notion is as false and unscriptural as the other, and to this notion as well as to the other the great Gospel text we have before us stands opposed. In the bosom of this heavenly message we not only find the beat of an infinite heart, but the imperial majesty of a holy will.
^ There is no more warrant for the dear God of sentimentalism than for the hard malignant God of railing unbelief, and there is no warrant whatever for either. Let us carefully read the text again. " God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish." Who- soever believes. But suppose men do not believe and will not believe. Do you not see the inevitable, irresistible next step? If men still will not believe, then they still will perish. God's love does not save everybody, although it goes out to everybody. Some men will not take its great gift. And if the sacrifice is rejected, how can it help the sinner it is made for ? .
^ God is all Love, and nothing but Love and Goodness can come from Him. He is as far from Anger in Himself, as from Pain and Darkness. But when the fallen Soul of Man had awakened in itself a wrathful, self-tormenting Fire, which could never be put out by itself, which could never be relieved by the natural Power of any Creature whatsoever, then the Son of God, by a Love greater than that which created the World, became
^ H. Jolmson, From Love to Praise^ 6.
ST. JOHN III. i6 20I
Man, and gave His own Blood and Life into the fallen Soul, that it might, through His Life in it, be raised, quickened, and born again into its first state of inward Peace and Delight, Glory and Perfection, never to be lost any more.^
2. " God so loved the world that he gave" This is always and everywhere the sign and token of love, this generous need to give itself forth. Love is prodigal — a reaching out, an overflowing beyond the borders and boundaries of self ; an imperious desire to make some sacrifice, to do something for the sake of the beloved. Wherever you meet this passion of affection, you will meet that same splendid impetus of self -giving. The one great passion of a poet Hke W. E. Henley is a love of his country — not always wise but always genuine — and it bursts forth into those exultant lines —
What have I done for you,
England, my England ? Wliat is there I would not do,
England, my own?
CK The story is told by Luther that when his translation of the Bible was being printed in Germany, pieces of the printer's work were allowed to fall carelessly upon the floor of his shop. One day the printer's little daughter coming in picked up a piece of paper on which she found just the words, "God so loved the world that he gave" — the rest of the sentence not having yet been printed. It was a veritable revelation to her, for up to that time she had always been told that the Almighty was to be dreaded, and could be approached only through penance. The new light thrown upon God's natm-e by the scrap that had fallen into her hands seemed to flood her whole being with its radiance, so that her mother asked her the reason of her joyfulness. Putting her hand in her pocket, Luther tells us, the girl handed out the little crumpled piece of paper with the unfinished sentence. Her mother read it, and was perplexed : " He gave — what was it He gave ? " For a moment the child was puzzled, but only for a moment ; then, with a quick intuition, " I don't know ; but if He loved us well enough to give us anything, we need not be afraid of Him." : Truly there are things hidden from the wise and prudent that are revealed to babes. How impossible is Spinoza's demand that although God is not so much as interested in us, we ought to feel towards Him an overmastering love of the mind ! And how