* Thomas Davis.
I JOHN IV. 8 339
O Blessed well of love, O flower of Grace,
O glorious Morning-starre, 0 lampe of light.
Most lively image of Thy Father's Face,
Eternall King of glorie, Lord of might,
Meeke lambe of God before all worlds behight,
How can we Thee requite for all this good ?
Or what can prize that Thy most precious blood ? ^
IV.
K"" i^ God's Love in Human Life.
1. God's love is personal: it is not mere compassion for the multitude ; it is an infinite affection for the individual. The sun cannot shine upon the just, and not upon the unjust, for the sun is light, and it cannot help shining. God cannot love one and withhold His love from another, for God is love, and He cannot help loving. He loves us when we are good ; and when we are bad He loves us still. He loves some with the love of pity, and others with the love of pride; He loves some with the love of compassion, and others with the love of complacency. But He loves us all, and will never cease from loving us, no matter how far we stray from Him. If some are lost, it is because they will become so estranged from good, so loveless, that God's love no longer affects them; but it will still be theirs, and will follow them even down to doom.
^ God's love is like His sunlight, diffused throughout the heaven, catching the heights of the hills and crowning them with ruddy gold and clothing them in purple. So it seems to us an easy and a natural thing for God to love some people ; outstanding men and women whose goodness might make them dear to Him. But this is not all that the sun does. It climbs higher that it may creep lower — down the hill-sides further and further, until it lifts the mists of the valley and covers the meadows with its glory, and kisses the daisy and fills its cup with gold and puts energy and strength into its very heart. God loves the good, the true, the pure, but His love rises higher that it may come down lower ; and He loves me — me. I can wrap this love of His about me and claim it all as my own.^
^ We are told of a painter who chose to remain unknown ;
^ Spenser. ^ M. G. Pearse, Short Talks/or the Times, 15.
340 GOD
the man of genius, the born painter, who refused to paint because men would not understand, would not properly appreciate his work. He shrank, as every sensitive man would shrink, from having his work bought by vulgar men, to be hung up in their galleries or on their dining-room walls, not because they cared for art, but because it was the fashionable thing to patronize art, and prove your wealth by the pictures with which you lined your walls. He shuddered at the thought. He would never degrade the genius that was in him by pandering to vulgar wealth. He would go on holding fellowship with his own soul's visions in the soul's private sanctuary ; but he would not demean himself by selling his soul to the man who merely could pay the highest price for it. But that is not the noblest genius. Eeal genius imist express itself, even for its own sake. May we not say that God must express Himself for His own sake ? God has poured out the wealth of His redemption. We may reject it or receive it : God must give it. God must sing the song of His own heart. He wrote it in the lives of heroes; spoke it from the lips of prophets ; told the wealth of it in the life and death of Jesus. He has been telling it unweariedly through the ages. Men have rejected it, scorned it, treated it with contempt. It matters not ; to God to tell Himself was a necessity, for " God is love." ^
2. God's love is redemptive and persists in spite of our unworthi- ness. — A man had fallen into a deep dark pit, and lay at its miry bottom, groaning and utterly unable to move. Confucius, passing by, approached the edge of the pit, and said, " Poor fellow, I am sorry for you ; why were you such a fool as to get in there ? If you ever get out do not get in again." The man said, " I cannot get out." That is Confucianism. A Buddhist priest next came by, and said, " Poor fellow, I am pained to see you down there. I think that if you could climb up two-thirds of the way or even half, I could reach you and lift you out." But the man was utterly helpless and unable to rise. That is Buddhism. Next the Saviour came by, and, hearing his cries, went to the brink of the pit, reached down and laid hold of the man, brought him up and said, " Go and sin no more." That is Christianity. God in Christ takes man from the horrible pit and the miry clay, and sets his feet upon the rock, and establishes his goings, and puts a song of praise into his mouth,