1 JOHN iv. 7-14.
Let me more assiduously think of God's love. Let me sit down to it. In the National Gallery can be seen two sorts of people. There are the mere vagrants, who are always "on the move," passing from picture to picture, without seeing any. And there are the students, who sit down, and contemplate, and meditate, and appropriate, and saturate. And there are vagrants in respect to the love of the Lord. They have a passing glimpse, but the impression is not vital and vitalizing, and there are the students, who are always gazing, and who are continually crying, "O the depth of the riches of the love of God in Christ!" "His riches are unsearchable!"
And God's love is the creator of my love. "While I muse the fire burns." I am kindled into the same holy passion. That is to say, contemplation determines character. We acquire the hues of the things to which we cling. To hold fellowship with love is to become loveful and lovely. "We love because He first loved us."
And then, in the third place, it is through my love that I know my Lord. "_Everyone that loveth knoweth God._" Love is the lens through which I discern the secret things of God.
DECEMBER The Thirtieth
"_Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven._" --PSALM xxxii.
It is the blessedness of emancipation. The boat which has been tethered to the weird, baleful shore is set free, and sails toward the glories of the morning. The man, long cramped in the dark, imprisoning pit, is brought out, and stretches his limbs in the sweet light and air of God's free world. Black servitude is ended; glorious liberty begins.
It is the blessedness of education. For when we are freed we are by no means perfected. We are liberated babes; and our Emancipator does not desert us in our spiritual infancy. The foundling is not abandoned. "Having loved His own He loved them unto the end." He begins with us in the spiritual nursery, and He will train and lead and feed us until we are "perfect in Christ Jesus."
Therefore is it the blessedness of exultation. The babe is resting on the bosom of the Lord, and "the joy of the Lord is his strength." It is not my emancipation that ensures my joy; it is the abiding Presence of the Emancipator.
DECEMBER The Thirty-first