1 F. W. Robertson.
EPHESIANS III. 17-19 183
from Him, He makes us know that His high Eternity is summed up, and shortly rendered in His love ; and that love, though it be only ours, has a right to know love, though it be God's ; a right to appropriate it, a right to dwell in Him, and in Him to advance for ever.^
(4) The Depth. — The love of Christ is profound as the utter- most abyss of human sin and wretchedness. We begin to see " the depth of the riches " of it when we reflect on the marvel that the Lord should have loved us at all. His love was not caused by anything in us, otherwise He could never have loved us. The natural condition of His people is unlovely and even loath- some in His sight. We recognize this when we look unto the rock whence we are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence we are digged. But that vast, measureless love of His has gone away down far deeper than the lowest depths of human sin, " and underneath are the everlasting arms."
^ Our love is so often only a narrow sentiment ; we can so easily touch the bottom. It shines and shimmers like a white shore, but we can sail nothing in it. It is wanting in depth and there- fore is lacking in deepness of ministry. Now turn to the Lord :
0 love of God how deep and great, Far deeper than man's deepest hate.
Let us lay hold of that most tremendous line. Let us grip it, or, better still, let it grip us. Take our own deepest hate, or the hate of any fiercely hating man whom we have known — deep, black, secre- tive and malignant as hell ! And God's love is deeper than that ! " He descended into hell." Yes, and He is still doing it ! Some of us would never have been found unless He had found us there. We sometimes say of a man who has lost his heritage, and who would fain fill himself with the husks that the swine do eat, " He's got very low ! " Yes, but the love of the Lord can go lower and deeper still. The vilest wretch who crawls the earth to-day may have the everlasting arms beneath him.
He came from on high to suffer and die. To save a poor sinner like me.^
^ The puzzle which baffles faith is, How can Christ under- stand and sympathize with man when He has never sinned ? The monumental pile of righteousness that pillars the church and
^ E. W. Benson, Living Theology, 7.
' J. H, Jowett, in The British Congregationalist, Jan. 28, 1909.
i84 THE LOVE OF CHRIST
maintains social respectability may tell me what I ought to be. He may quote all the maxims and mottoes of virtue, and repeat the commandments and denounce the " exceeding sinfulness of sin," and thank God that he is " not as other men are," but what does he know about my conflict ? His ravings about virtue do not help me ; they depress and discourage and enrage me.
'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! My flesh, that
I seek In the Godhead !
I seek a Saviour who knows my road, not from His study of geography, but because He has travelled it. How can Christ do this when He has never sinned ? He does it by the power of love. This is the miracle love works. It enables us to enter fully into all the struggles and aspirations of those we love. It so thoroughly puts our life into accord with another's that we are not only able to sympathize with what he suffers and enjoys, but we find it impossible not to do so. Love cannot escape this vicarious participation.*
V.
To Know the Love of Chkist.
1. The true man desires to know, to understand, to apprehend. He is one who feels that the world is full of an attraction to his mind, to which he must yield, or forfeit his name of man. And there is nowhere a sweeter, more charming picture than that of a man who is a humble, eager student, filled with high thoughts and earnest ambitions ; a man who can live " laborious days " and despise the common pleasures of the crowd ; he is one who has kinship with the skies, and lives on the high places of the world.
^ Browning, in one of his poems, " A Grammarian's Funeral," gives us a wonderful picture of a man eager and heroic in his quest after knowledge, and determined to strive to the last hour of his earthly life. They are now going to bury him — where ? The appropriate country for such a man is not the " unlettered plain," but " a tall mountain, citied to the top, crowded with culture ! " He belonged to the morning : his body must rest near the stars. And as the funeral cortege winds up the heights, we are given the picture of the man and his majestic quest. Men did not know ^ J. I. Vance, Tendency, 71.
EPHESIANS HI. 17-19 185
him for a long time : " long he lived nameless." We leave work for play, but he was a man who " left play for work, and grappled with the world, bent on escaping," and when he was pitied, he " stepped on with pride over men's pity." Many of iis begin a book, but do not read it from cover to cover ; but when this man got the scroll of a bard or sage, he " straight got by heart that book to its last page." But some one would be ready to say: " Why trouble thus over books ? Why burden the soul ? This is the time to taste life ! Up with the curtain ! " " No," he would say ; " even though I have read the crabbed text, still there is the comment. Most or least, painful or easy, these are not to be thought of by me. I must know all that books can give me." But men said : " Time passes ! Live now or never ! " And yet this was his grand intent —