ii. In Christ Jesus.
" Which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
1. St. Paul does not find the proof of God's love and the justification of ours in nature, history, or life. The love of God
* Anna Bunston, The Porch of Paradise, 8.
144 AN INSEPARABLE LOVE
in creation is in eclipse, or at least in partial eclipse ; and if we are to construe the Divine character from the facts of nature, we must hesitate and fear. The light is not clear, and thinkers are sorely puzzled. Here, then, comes in the mission of the Christian Church — to affirm the love of God in Christ Jesus to all mankind. The justification of an absolute confidence in God's unfailing love is found not in the sphere of nature, but in the sphere of redemp- tion. The austere science of our day has put entirely out of court the rosy philosophy of the old deism. It annihilates senti- ment; it will have none of it. If men are now to admire, reverence, and love God, they must find another basis than nature for their worship. There is none other except redemp- tion ; more than ever is the world shut up to that glorious fact. It is enough. Here the eternal love blazes out with irresistible demonstration. We cannot deny it, we cannot doubt it. " Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins." " Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us."
^ To-day two great schools of scientists seriously differ in their interpretation of the world. One holds that nature knows only force, selfishness, and violence ; whilst the other, recognizing the large play of egotism and violence in the evolution of things, discerns that sympathy and sacrifice are prominent facts of the physical universe ; the first denies love, the second acknowledges it. The contention between the philosophers will go on intermin- ably, for really they are occupied with the diverse aspects of a paradoxical world, the moral of their controversy being that love is not absent in the creation, but revealed only partially, faintly, fitfully. In many creatures the evidences of love are conspicuous, in others there seems a denial of it. The delightful element is unmistakable in doves, butterflies, nightingales, and a thousand more lovely things; it is painfully lacking in hawks, sharkb, crocodiles, rattlesnakes, and microbes. But men do not argue at noon whether the sun shines or not; and in the presence of Calvary there is an end of all strife touching the nature of God and the design of His government. Naturalism may doubt God's love, may deny it, but at the Cross we no longer guess and fear. He who died for us loves us, whatever enigmas may mock. We see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ — the face marred more than any man's. What shall separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord ? ^
» W. L. Watkinson.
ROMANS VIII. 3S, 39 145
What is it to the circling hours,
The life they take 'or laring? What is it to the winds and showers?
They know not anything.
But somehow, ere I am aware,
There comes a hush and thrill, For all the sunshine and the air
A Presence seems to fill;
And from the sudden-opening sky,
A low Voice seems to say, " I am the Eesurrection, I
The Life, the Truth, the Way.
This Nature, which you idly blame,
Is but the robe I wear; From Me the human spirit came.
And all its griefs I bear.
The smile whose light thou canst not see.
The grace that left thy side, Though vanished from the earth, with Me
For ever they abide."
With Him I cannot be at strife;
Then will I kneel and say, "In love He gave me that sweet life,
In love He took away.
And love's unfailing life, in Him,
Outlasts this arching sky; For worlds may waste and suns grow dim.
But love can never die."
2. God's love is illimitable, all-pervasive, eternal; yes, but it is a love which has a channel and a course ; love which has a method and a process by which it pours itself over the world. It is not, as some representations would make it, a vague, half- nebulous light diffused through space as in a chaotic, half-made universe; but all is gathered in that great Light which rules the day — even in Him who said: "I am the Light of the World." In Christ the love of God is all centred and embodied, that it ROMANS — 10
146 AN INSEPARABLE LOVE:
may be imparted to all sinful and hungry hearts, even as burning coals are gathered on a hearth that they may give warmtli to all who are in the house.
The love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord is the heart of the Christian Gospel. It was what won the world at the beginning to the Christian obedience, and it is what holds the world now and will hold it as long as there are sins to be forgiven and hearts hungering for reconciliation with God. It is independent of much knowledge which may be discredited, and of much opinion which may become a fashion of the past. Whatever else which passes for Christianity and is supposed in some way to uphold it may decrease and disappear, this will increase and rise with purer and greater brightness upon the world. Every one of our in- tellectual conceptions of tl)e mystery of the Godhead, of the Incarnation and the Atonement, may undergo a change, but the love which spoke, and acted, and lived in Jesus Christ will always touch the human heart with the deepest conviction and assurance of the love of God, and be the revelation and symbol of the Divine disposition towards the children of men.