subser-
•'Rom.xvi.4. " Phil. ii. 30, ' ib. vcr. 1(5, 1/.
subservient to the welfare of mankind, if only we will endea- vour to improve them with diligence, and to exercise them with fidelity.
You see what God would have us hoth to be and do : he would have us overwhelmed with a sense of his love to us, and abounding in the most self-denying exercises of love to aU mankind. Come, Brethren, gird yourselves to the occa- sion. Your God and Saviour demands it at your hands. The whole universe also joins in one common cry, " Come over to us, and help us." And he who most abounds in offices of love to others, shall receive the richest recompence into his own bosom from that God whose name and nature is " Love."]
1 John iv. 9, 10. In this ivas manifested the love of God towards lis, because that God sent his only -begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
OF all the endearing characters that are given us of God, that by which he is designated in the words immediately preceding our text, is the most compre- hensive and most glorious ; " God is love." It might seem indeed that this appellation but ill-suited with the sterner attribute of justice : but in the execution of his wrath against impenitent transgressors, his love to the whole creation appears, no less than in his dispensations of grace and mercy to the penitent : even as the love of a Judge towards the whole com- munity appears in condemning a murderer, as much as in protecting the weak, or acquitting the innocent. There is however one exercise of his love which infi- nitely exceeds all others ; and that is, the gift of his only-begotten Son to die for us. This is the subject set before us in the text, and which the return of this day * calls more especially to our remembrance.
Let us consider, I. The love of God as it is here exhibited —
Instead
* Chilstmas-day.