Oh ! how shall I, whose native sphere
Is dark, whose mind is dim, Before the Ineffable appear, And on my naked spirit bear
That uncreated beam ? ,
There is a way for man to rise
To that sublime abode : An offering and a sacrifice, A Holy Spirit's energies.
An Advocate with God.
These, these prepare us for the sight
Of Holiness above; The sons of ignorance and night May dwell in the Eternal Light !
Through the Eternal Love.^
I.
The Wonder of the Father's Love.
[, i 1. God's love is original and spontaneous. Love is that mysterious power by which we live in the lives of others, and
^ Thomas Biiiuey.
I JOHN III. I 267
are thus moved to benevolent and even self-sacrificing action on their behalf. Such love is, after all, one of the most universal things in humanity. But always natural human love is a flame that must be kindled and fed by some quality in its object. It finds its stimulus in physical instinct, in gratitude, in admiration, in mutual congeniality and liking. Always it is, in the first place, a passive emotion, determined and drawn forth by an external'" attraction. But the love of God is an ever-springing fountain. S- Its fires are self-kindled. It is love that shines forth in its purest splendour upon the unattractive, the unworthy, the repellent. Herein is love, in its purest essence and highest potency, not in our love to God, but in this, that God loved us. Hence follows the apparently paradoxical consequence, upon which the Epistle lays a unique emphasis, that our love to God is not even the most godlike manifestation of love in us. It is gratitude for His benefits, adoration of His perfections, our response to God's love to us, but not its closest reproduction in kind. In this respect, indeed, God's love to man and man's love to God form the opposite poles, as it were, of the universe of love, the one self-created and owing nothing to its object, the other entirely dependent upon and owing everything to the infinite perfection of its object ; the one the overarching sky, the other merely its reflection on the still surface of the lake. And it is, as the Epistle insists, not in our love to God, but in our Christian love to our fellow-men, that ^C the Divine love is reproduced, with a relative perfection, in us.
^ In my old parish there was a little loch in the midst of the forest, and I was fond of visiting it. Its chief attraction for me was the multitude of wild birds which peopled its banks and islets ; and once I observed a novelty. I had been accustomed to see there all manner of familiar water-fowl — coot, ducks, swans ; but that evening I noticed others such as I had never seen before — birds of brilliant plumage, crimson, blue, and glossy green. And I recognized them as strangers from another clime than ours, from some far-off land where the air is warmer and the sun shines brighter and paints everything in gaudier hues. I said : " These are no natives : they are foreign birds " ; and I learned by and by that they had been imported from Africa.
And this is precisely the thought in the Apostle's mind. " That love," he says, " the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, V is a love which never sprang from earth's cold soil. It is from r'
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268 THE LOVE THAT CONFERS SONSHIP
some far-off region ; it is from Heaven itself. Behold what unearthly love the Father hath bestowed upon us ! " ^
•^ 2. In the Apostle's eulogy of love we find his memories of V Jesus crystallized. To St. John the love of God was something more than wonderful. He was now a hoary-headed saint. He had laid his head in his youth on Jesus' bosom, and was beginning to realize the love of God in Christ even then. Even then, as he looked up into those human eyes, the reality of God's love had flowed into his consciousness. But there was more to be known than he knew at the supper table. As he stood by the cross, it may be that in those moments, when faith triumphed, the love of God became still more a reality. As he gathered with that little chosen band round the Person of the risen Lord, and saw that Face radiant with resurrection glory, the love of God was already a stronger power within his being. As the mighty Spirit at Pentecost came down and shook the house, and filled their hearts, and as he himself, as one of the first missionaries, went forth to tell the glad tidings of great joy, the love of God had already begun to be a stronger power within him still. Now, his head is hoary, the winter of age has gathered round him, life is fast receding, the world is disappearing, and eternity is drawing near. But it would seem that in each fresh step of his human career he
/had attained a fresh revelation of this Divine object, and now, in his last days, he calls upon all the world to gaze upon it, as if it were the most attractive of all spectacles. " Behold," he says, as though he would fain draw aside the curtain of unbelief, and reveal to man that which man most requires to know, — " Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us."