^ The grand foundation or ground of everything is love, God's love. Because "God is love," therefore His love goes forth to sinners. Because His love went forth to sinners. He provided a way by which He could restore sinners again to happiness and to Himself ; and so Jesus died for them. And since Jesus died for sinners, therefore God chose us, drew us, pardoned us, spoke peace to us. And having loved us enough to do this, what will not the same love do, what prayer will He not hear, what good thing can He withhold, what undertaking will He not make for us, for time and for eternity ? That is a foundation. It will
^ Thomas Guthrie.
EPHESIANS III. 17-19 167
support anything — any comfort, any work, any hope we ever choose to build upon it. It is like some mathematical proposition, which cannot be assailed, and the whole problem is actually contained within it, and only wants to be worked out. It stands to the soul like solid adamant to the whole temple — a foundation.^
3, In love. — The soil in which the living tree is planted is love. What is the love in which the trees of righteousness are rooted ? Whether is it God's love to man, or man's love to God and to his brother ? The question admits of an answer at once easily intelligible and demonstrably true. The love in which the roots of faith strike down for nourishment is not human but Divine. It is not even that grace which is sovereign and Divine in its origin but residing and acting in a renewed human heart ; it is the attribute, and even the nature, of Deity, for " God is love." The soil which bears and nourishes the new life of man is the love of God in the gift of His Son.
It introduces an inextricable confusion of ideas to think of believers as trees rooted in their own love — an emotion that has its abode and its exercise within their own hearts. The roots of a man's faith and hope must penetrate, not inward into the love he exercises, but outward into the love which is exercised towards him. The roots of a tree grow, not into the tree itself, but into an independent soil, which at once supports its weight and nourishes its life. In like manner a Christian's faith does not lean and live upon anything within himself ; it goes out and draws all its support from God's love to sinners in the Gospel of His Son.
^ According to the Catechism of the Westminster Assembly, " God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth." A very comprehensive and noble definition, no doubt ! Yet did it never strike you as strange that there is no mention of love here ? This appears a very remarkable omission — an omission as remarkable as if an orator who undertook to describe the firmament left out the sun ; or an artist, in painting the human face, made it sight- less, and gave no place on the canvas to those beaming eyes which impart to the countenance its life and expression. Why did an Assembly, for piety, learning, and talents, the greatest, perhaps, that ever met in England, or anywhere else, in that catalogue of the Pivine attributes assign no place to love ? Unless we are to
' J. Vaughan.
i68 THE LOVE OF CHRIST
understand the term " goodness " as comprehending love, the omission may be thus explained and illustrated : Take a globe and, observing their natural order, lay upon its surface the different hues of the rainbow ; give it a rapid motion round its axis ; and now the blue, red, yellow, and other colours vanish. As if by magic, the whirling sphere instantly changes into purest white, presenting to our eyes a visible, and to our understanding a palpable, proof that the sunbeam is not a simple but a compound body : thread spun of various rays, which, when blended into one, form what we call light. And may it not be that these divines make no distinct mention of love, just because they held that as all the separate colours blended together form light, so all the attributes acting together make love ; and that thus, because God is just, wise, powerful, holy, good, and true, of necessity, therefore, and in the express words of John, " God is love " ? ^
^ All vigorous life is a correspondence between organism and environment. If a tree is to be " rooted and grounded," it must find, deep hidden in the soil, the materials it requires for its own substance. Otherwise, poverty in the soil will be reflected in its stunted branches, yellow leaves, and imperfect roots. Just so, if we are to be " rooted and grounded in love," love must be the deepest ingredient in the soil in which our spiritual nature grows. The fact that men and women have become thus " rooted and grounded " that, by the exercise of faith, their characters have been " made perfect in love," is thus the evidence of something more ; it implies the presence of love in their spiritual environment.^
^ It was manifest from her childhood, as almost invariably with those heroes and heroines of history who have been the lovers and leaders of mankind, that Florence Nightingale had special gifts and sympathies, and that she was inspired by a sacred ambition to use them for the alleviation of pain and sorrow. I remember a row of young palm-trees in Dr. Bennett's garden at Mentone, and one of them was thrice the height of the rest. There was a tank of water five yards below, but the tree had reached it with its roots. So Florence, rooted and grounded in love, rose above her fellows.^