2. It is a self-sacrificing love. It is a love that thought no sacrifice too great. The surest test of love is sacrifice. We measure love as we should measure her twin-brother life, "by loss, and not by gain, not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth." Look at the mother with her child. She sacrifices ease and sleep, and she would sacrifice life, too, for her little one, she loves her baby so. Think of the patriot and his country. He counts it joy to drain his dearest veins, he loves his land so well. Eecall the scholar at his books. Amusements, intercourse, and sleep, he almost spurns them. His love for learning is so deep he hardly counts them loss. Yes, in the willingness to sacrifice all that is dearest lies the measure of noblest love. Turn now to Calvary, turn to the Cross, and by the sight of the crucified Redeemer there, begin to learn the greatness of God's love.
f| God is holy. He is without sin. He cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, but He can sympathize with sinners. With all the vicarious passion of undying love, He enters into our experience, shares our woe and sorrow, our despair and remorse, and tastes our sin. Just as one suffers for and with his child in trouble, so does God with His children. 1 F. Temple. 2 Letters of Thomas Erslcine, i. 153.
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Thus we find ourselves in the Godhead. Thus a great love bridges the chasm between God's holiness and man's guilt. Love spreads its white wings and flies across the abyss. That flight neither tires nor frightens love. Indeed love effaces the chasm.
T| Eecently in New York City a baby's life was saved through the transfusion of blood from the body of the father into that of his child. The operation was one of the most remarkable of its kind and has excited the keen interest of many outside the medical profession. Because of the delicate and dangerous character of the operation, it was impossible to use either anaesthetics or a connecting tube uniting the body of father and child. When the operation began the child was in a dying condition, and before the operation was finished, to ordinary appearances, it was dead. The father's arm was opened from the wrist to the elbow and a vein lifted out. An opening was then made in the child's leg and the blood-vessels of parent and offspring stitched together. An attending surgeon said to the father, "Does it hurt?" With a face livid with pain he said, " It hurts like hell, but if I can save the baby, what of it ? " At last everything was ready for the red tide from the father's heart to enter the apparently lifeless little body lying across his slashed arm ; and the instant the blood rushed into the child's body it revived. What had been practically a dead body was quickened.1
3. It is a love for sinners. It is here that, wide as the poles, God's love stands separate from all the love of men. "God commendeth his love to us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." God longs to love me into something lovable. But not for anything lovable in me did He love me first. While I was yet a sinner He loved me. While I hated Him He loved me. While I was fighting against Him, in the rebellious years, He loved me. If we love Him, it is because He first loved us. Such causeless love is wonderful, passing the love of women.2
T[ God is gracious and merciful, as the Scriptures show. He loves even real sinners. Yea, to the blind, hard world, which lieth in the wicked one, He has sent as a Saviour His own Son. I could not have done that, and yet I am a real sinner myself.3
*TT A prominent Sunday-school worker, who was accustomed, in former years, to visit Sunday-schools, and to address the little ones there, sometimes startled the little folks in the primary department, and even their teachers, by his unlooked-for question:; and statements. " What kind of children does God love ? " he
1 J. I. Vance, Tendency, 73. 2 G. H. Morrison. 8 Luther.
308 GOD'S OWN LOVE
would ask. " Good children," " Good children," would come back the answer from the confident little ones in every part of the room. " Doesn't God love any children but good children ? " the visitor would ask. "No, sir," would be the hearty response. Then the visitor would startle or shock the little ones, and sometimes their teacher, by saying plainly and deliberately: "I think that God loves bad children very dearly." At this, some of the surprised little ones would draw up their mouths, and perhaps exclaim, " Oh ! " Others would simply stare in bewilderment. Perhaps the teacher would have a look of wonder or regret, and wait for the next disclosure of ignorance or error on the speaker's part. " Did I say that God loved to have little children bad ? " was the visitor's next question. " No, sir," would come back from some of the startled little ones in a tone of relief. "No, I didn't say that God loves to have children bad. God loves to have children good. He wants them to be very good, — as good as they can be. But when they are bad children God still loves them. God is very loving, and He keeps on loving little ones who don't even love Him at all." That would be a new idea to many of those little ones. And there is nothing that a child is quicker to catch, or gladder to receive, than a bright, new idea at any time. The average child would take in the thought suggested quicker and more willingly than the average teacher. Then the visitor would make the thought plainer to the pupils by an illustration. "Does your mother love you?" he would ask. Almost every child would promptly answer, " Yes, sir," to that question. " Were you ever a bad child ? " was the next home thrust. "Yes, sir," would come back faintly from some. " Did your mother stop loving you then ? Did you have to feel that there was no loving mother to go back to, because you were a bad child ? " The child heart recoiled from that thought, knowing the mother heart too well to admit it. Then was the time to press the precious truth that God loves bad children more than the lovingest father or the lovingest mother in the world loves a child; that, even when the father and mother forsake a needy child, the Lord will take up that child tenderly. That Sunday-school worker found, in his wide field of observation, how common and how deep-seated is the idea that a child's accept- ance with God is rather because of the child's lovableness than because of God's lovingness. Nor is this fearful error to be found merely, or chiefly, among primary-class pupils and their teachers.1