III. The charaotee of these close relations. 1. It has a human side : " I will be the God of all the families of Israel." (1) Jehovah is acknowledged. The people had followed Baal. They return to the true God. Christians who acknowledge God and Christ should frankly confess their faith. (2) God is worshipped. If he is regarded by us as becomes his being and character, he must be honoured as well as acknowledged. (3) God is obeyed. If he is admitted to be our God, he must be submitted to as our sovereign Lord. (4) God is trusted. Our God is our supreme Helper. When we enter into right relations with God, we learn to confide in him. (5) God is enjoyed. He is our God as our Portion. 2. The character of this relation between God and his people has also a Divine side : "And they shall be my people." Religion is not only an exercise of human spiritual activities; it is also a sphere in which God works, influencing his people. Though his people are unworthy of God, he is not ashamed of them. He owns them. If God regards any men as his people, great consequences follow. (1) He will prize them as his treasures, showing to them love, bestowing upon them favours, guarding them from harm. (2) He will lay obligatioDs upon them, call them to service, honour them with trusts. These two characteristics of the close relation of God and his people are nearly allied. God will not h(mour and protect us while we forget or disown him ; but bis great favours to ua help us the better to ow]t and serve him.
Ver. 8. — The everlasting love of God, God appeared "from afar" to Jeremiah. When he seems to have forsaken us he is not loving us the less. In these dark hoars he may give to us, as to Jeremiah, the richest assurance of his everlasting love.
I. Consider the wonder of the fact that God's love is everlastiko. There ia » wonder about this fact, since there are so many things that might well be thought likely to limit and stay the love of God to such beings as we are, viz. : 1. Our unworthi- ness. God is holy, and must delight only in holiness; he is great, and can create innumerable beings of far higher powers than ours. Why, then, should he love such imperfect creatures as men? — why love those who are corrupt and sinful? 2. Our indifference. Love looks for a return of love ; but men have treated God's love with neglect. Through the long ages during which God has been visiting his children with ceaseless loving-kindness they have been coldly turning aside to their own ways, deaf to the entreaties of an infinite condescension. 3. Our unfaithfulnets. For love to remain unbroken it is expected that it should be honoured by fidelity. Unfaithfulness is naturally regarded as a reason for withdrawing the privileges of affection. But God's children have been untrue to him. They have forsaken his ways, abused his blessings, flung insult on his mercy. How, then, can he continue to love them ? It is, indeed, a marvel that, through these long ages of the world's wild wanderings, God should still follow his unworthy children with ceaseless love, never refusing to bless them, always •utreating them to return to him. And it must be a marvel to as that, through all the
OH. XXXI. 1—40.] THE BOOK OP THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. 17
years of our unworthy lives, he has shown the same long-suffering, forbearing meroy tc each of us. It is wonderful that God should ever love such unworthy creatures as we are, but it is " passing strange " that he should not cease to love us after all our provo- cations of his wrath, that he should love us with "an everlasting love," and should " have continued his loving-kindness unto" us.
II. Inquire into some of the reasons wht God's lotb is EVERLASTiNa. We must not look for these in any hidden merits of our own, which our modesty has passed ovei while God's favour has been won by them. The secret of the love of God and of its eternal endurance is to be sought in his nature and in his relations to us. 1. Z%e nature of Qod. " God is love." He loves because he cannot but love, because he delights to love, because his love must be ever flowing and is so vast that it must needs flow out eternally in all directions. It is not the attraction of the object, but the character of the love, that accounts for its perpetual endurance. The earth is bathed in summer sunlight without having any peculiar attractions for light — only because the vast stores of the sun must ever empty themselves by radiating out into space. The stream fer- tilizes the valley through no influence of the plants drawing it thither, but just because abundant springs pour forth their waters. And God radiates love, pours forth floods ot blessing, because he is full of love, because love has its laws of diffusion. Such love is not destroyed by the unwoithiness of the object. Closed shutters do nut prevent the sunshine from playing about the house. Sandy deserts, in which the waters of the stream are lost, do not stay the torrents from flowing down the mountain-sides. It is the nature ot true and perfect love to be eternal. " Charity endureth all thincrs," and " never faileth." " Love is love for evermore." 2. God's relations with us. God is our Father. We are his children by nature, and can never cease to be so. The prodigal son was an unworthy child, yet in his degradation he could still think of hia /at/ic7 (Luke XV. 17). A parent's love is not caused nor limited by the merits of lii- children. It has a deeper, a more unselfish source. It survives all the destruction vi just claims. God's love is the perfect parent's love. A mother whose daughter had left the home years back always kept her door on the latch at night, that, if her poo: child returned at any hour, she should never find it barred against her. Human natur is weak. A mother's love may fail, but God's never (Isa. xlix. 15).
III. NOTB THE PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES THAT FLOW FROM THE BVEULASTINO LOVE