fcibrarp ofthe theological ^emvnar^
PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY
AV\ ///.
/// \W
PRESENTED BY
William M. Paxton
BT 140 .G7 1806
Grant, James, 1802-1879.
God is love
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from
Princeton Theological Seminary Library
https://archive.org/details/godisloveorglimpOOgran
V
*
.i
BY THE SAME AUTHOR,
Uniform in Size and Price with the present Volume ,
OUR HEAVENLY HOME;
OR,
GLIMPSES OF THE GLORY AND BLISS OF
THE BETTER WORLD.
GOD IS LOVE;
C*Rj
LIMPSES OF THE FATHER'S INFINITE
AFFECTION FOR HIS PEOPLE.
I
GOD IS LOYE:
/
OB,
GLIMPSES OF THE FATHER’S INFINITE
AFFECTION FOR HIS PEOPLE.
BY THE AUTHOK OF
« OUR HEAVENLY HOME,” “ THE COMFORTER,”
“THE GLORIOUS GOSPEL” ETC.
LONDON:
J. M. DARTON & CO., 42, PATERNOSTER ROW.
I8G6.
V
}
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
The first Edition of this work, consisting of a
thousand copies, was exhausted in little more
than four months, and the demand still con¬
tinues to increase. It is to the Author the
source of a greater gratification than he can
express, that he has received from various quar¬
ters assurances of eminent profit and comfort
having been derived from the perusal of the
book. One such case will be found at the end
of the volume. The Author gives a place to it,
because one of the most distinguished divines
of the day has written to him, that he regards
it as one of the most remarkable instances of
viii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
book-usefulness he had ever met with. It is
the Author’s hope and prayer, that many such
instances of profit and comfort may hereafter
occur from the perusal of a volume in the pre¬
paration of which he has spent some of the
happiest hours of his life— a life which has
been, for many years, one of the most active and
laborious, perhaps, that any human being ever
led.
May 1858.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The great object of this volume wil 7 be. seen in
every page. It is to establish and illustrate the
glorious truth, that “ God is Love.” In an¬
other little work lately published by the Author,
under the title of “The Brother Born for
Adversity,” he has sought to set forth the
sympathies of the Saviour in the sorrows and
sufferings the saints experience on their path¬
way to heaven; and in this volume he has
endeavoured to bring home to the minds and
hearts of all believers the consoling and sancti¬
fying conviction, that God’s heart is ever full to
overflowing of affection for His people. The
X
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
writer knows from experience the tendency there
is in the minds even of those who have been
renewed by the Holy Spirit, to turn away from
God the Father, as if they discerned a perpetual
frown in His face, and to seek for rest and
repose in Christ the Son. It is because he not
only believes, but knows, that this feeling is
deplorably prevalent even among the best of
God’s people, that he has laboured with so much
earnestness to point out the error, and to shew
how dishonouring it is to God, as well as sub¬
versive of the Christian’s own peace of mind.
The importance which the Author attaches to
the subject will be his excuse for the frequency
and emphasis with which he brings that peculiar
aspect of it before the mind of the reader.
It may be right to remark, in reference to the
occasional instances in which he has twice
quoted the same passage of Scripture, that it
will be found on every such occasion, that the
second quotation has been given for the purpose
PREFACE TO THE FIE ST EDITION.
XI
of illustrating an aspect of Divine truth, differ¬
ent from that which the first was intended to
establish.
If the work, in the Author’s own estimation,
possesses any merit at all, it chiefly consists in
the vast accumulation of conclusive scriptural
proof which it contains, of the great and gra¬
cious fact,—that the heart of the Father is at all
times, and under all circumstances, infinitelv full
of the most tender love for His saints.
The Author has only further to state, that
never, perhaps, was a work of the kind written
amongst so many interruptions, and under cir¬
cumstances so unfavourable to that frame of
mind which is necessary for the production of
such a volume. This has arisen from the pecu¬
liarly distracting nature and extreme pressure
of the professional avocations of the writer.
Still, with all its imperfections, he humbly hopes
that the book may be owned and blessed of Him,
Xli PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
to promote whose glory, in conjunction with the
comfort of His people, it has been penned; and
should it ever come to the Author’s knowledge
that a single saint has received the slightest
benefit, or derived any measure of comfort from
the volume, he will feel amply compensated for
the labour he Has expended upon it.
November 18b7.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER L
PAGE
THE ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS OF THE
FATHER’S LOVE, . 1
CHAPTER 11.
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED, .... 23
CHAPTER III.
THE FATHER’S LOVE AS DISPLAYED IN BEING HTS
PEOPLE’S GOD,. M
CHAPTER IY.
THE FATHERLY CHARACTER OF GOD CONSIDERED
1 •
AS A PROOF OF HIS LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE,
>4
XIV
CONTENTS,
CHAPTER V.
FACE
THE LOVE OF GOD AS EXHIBITED IN VARIOUS
OTHER RELATIONS WHICH HE SUSTAINS TO
HIS SAINTS,.116
CHAPTER VI.
i
THE LOVE OF THE FATHER AS UNFOLDED BY INANI¬
MATE EMBLEMS,.145
CHAPTER VII
THE LOVE OF GOD AS MANIFESTED IN THE MISSION
OF CHRIST TO OUR WORLD, . . . 1(52
CHAPTER VIII.
EXPRESS AND IMPLIED ASSURANCES OF THE LOVE
OF GOD THE FATHER, .... 213
CHAPTER IX.
DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS OF HIS LOVE
FOR HIS PEOPLE, . . . 241
CONTENTS.
XV
CHAPTER X.
PACK
god’s love to his people as shewn in their
SEASONS OF SORROW, .... 2S0
CHAPTER XI.
further proofs of the father’s love to his
SAINTS IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW, . 32i)
CHAPTER XII.
GOD’S LOVE TO HIS PEOPLE IN DEATH AND IN THE
■ WORLD TO COME, . „ 382
\
GOD IS LOYE.
*
CHAPTER I.
i
THE ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS OF TTIE
FATHER’S LOYE.
It, is on every account of the deepest importance
that our views of divine truth should be in ac¬
cordance with the Word of God. Our own holi¬
ness and happiness, not less than the glory of
Him whose people we profess to be, are involved
in the fact of our entertaining correct notions of
what is revealed in the Bible regarding those
momentous subjects which are brought before
us with special prominence in that blessed book.
It may be doubted whether there be a single
person within the sound of the gospel, who
has had his attention directed to divine things,
who has not, at one period or other, been greatly
A
I
I
2
ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS
\roublecl in his mind on account of the hard
thoughts which he has had of God the Father.
The observation applies, with more or less truth,
to both of the two great classes into which the
world is divided,—those who have been converted
from the error of their ways, and those who
are still strangers to the regenerating work of
the Holy Spirit. Let any one, no matter to
which of the two classes he belongs, examine
himself, and see whether this be not at the pre- ^
sent time, or at one time was, his experience.
The conscience-stricken sinner and the partly-
sanctified believer must equally acknowledge
that he has, at some period or other of his life,
looked on God in the light of an austere master, J
and regarded Him with more or less of slavish
dread. There is a natural tendency in the *
minds of all, even of the regenerated as well
as of those who have never been renewed in the
spirit of their minds, to invest the character of
God the Father with a sternness which has the J
effect of repelling us from Him. We picture to (
ourselves a frowning God, and feel an inclina¬
tion, which we cannot resist, to turn away from
the contemplation of His character. We seek a
OF THE FATHER’S LOYE.
3
refuge from an angry Jehovah in the Lord Jesus
Christ, whom we regard as a Saviour of bound¬
less compassion, tenderness, and love. A con¬
trast is thus formed between God the Father
and God the Son, which is at once deeply
dishonouring to the first person of the Trinity,
most disastrous to the comfort of the believer,
and especially calculated to retard the work of
sanctification in the minds and hearts of God’s
people. Such a view of the Father is also emi¬
nently dangerous as regards the unconverted ;
for it has a natural and necessary tendency to
deter them from coming to God to seek- for
salvation.
It is distressing to think that a sentiment so
dishonouring to God, so destructive of the be¬
liever’s comfort, so adverse to his growth in
grace, and so manifestly calculated to prevent
the unconverted sinner from coming to God the
Father, should have been entertained and ex¬
pressed by some of our most distinguished
divines. And to make the matter worse, the
erroneous sentiment is embodied in the hymns
of some of our most popular psalmodists,—men
whose songs are sung in all our places of public
4
ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS
worship. Even Dr Watts himself, the sweetest
of all our uninspired singers in Israel, gives his
sanction to the unscriptural notion to which we
refer, in many of his beautiful poetic effusions.
It were easy to quote passages from many of
his hymns in which he gives expression to the
sentiment, that there was nothing in the heart
of God but unmingled wrath towards all the
descendants of Adam, until Christ interposed
on our behalf, and turned the anger of the Eather
away from us. The love of the Father is thus
made to be the effect of the voluntary offer which
the'Son made to give Himself up a sacrifice for
our sins. One quotation from Watts, illustrative
of the erroneous sentiment, that God was at one
time implacable towards our race, and only at
last became ajDpeased by Christ’s earnest and
persevering prayers on our behalf, is all that it
will be necessary to give. In his hundred and
eighth hymn, in the Second Book, he thus ex¬
presses himself:—
“ Once ’twas a seat of dreadful wrath,
And shot devouring flame ;
Our God appear’d consuming fir^,
And Vengeance was His name.
OF THE FATHER’S LOVE.
5
"Rich were the drops of Jesus’ blood,
That calm’d His frowning face,
That sprinkled o’er the burning throne
And turn’d the wrath to grace.”
In these lines there is an awful misconcep¬
tion of divine truth. Other theological writers,
no less eminent than Dr Watts, have expressed
themselves on the same subject in language
equally objectionable. Jonathan Edwards, in his
“ History of Redemption,” speaks in that able,
and, with few exceptions, judicious work, of
Christ having jparchased the love of God. to¬
wards us. Other divines, some of whom stand
at the head of the evangelical school, represent
the love of the Father as the fruit of the volun¬
tary substitution of the Son. The love of God is
spoken of by others as having been caused by the
interposition of Christ on our behalf, instead of
Christ’s substitution being the effect of the love
■of the first person in the Trinity,
i In other words, the scheme of man’s redemption
k represented as having originated, not with God
' le Father, but with Christ the Son. Nothing
'buld be more opposed to the fact; nothing
* ; uld be more at variance with the whole tenor
6
ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS
of the teachings of Scripture on the subject.
The consequences of such a belief cannot fail to
be most derogatory to the character of God in
the eyes of His creatures, and most disastrous
as regards themselves. Such a representation
of God must, so long as it is regarded as correct,
deepen and perpetuate that estrangement from
Him which is natural to us all. It is inex¬
pressibly painful to believe, that there ever could
have been a period in the eternity which is
past, at which God did not feel the outgo¬
ings of an infinite affection towards us. It
would not be easy—indeed, it would not be
possible—to imagine anything more calculated
to extinguish our love to the Father where it
exists, or to prevent its being implanted in
the heart where it does not, than the reflec¬
tion that His love to us was not eternal; for
it could not have been from everlasting, were
the theory we are combating in accordance with
Scripture.
But happily the hypothesis is wholly without
foundation. It has not the semblance of a
basis on which to rest. Not one solitary pas¬
sage in the inspired Volume can be adduced
OF THE FATHER’S LOVE.
7
which gives even a seeming sanction to it. On
the other hand, the holy oracles abound with
passages which in the most explicit and emphatic
manner assert and illustrate the very opposite
sentiment. There never was a time—no, not a
moment, in the councils of eternity—when an
intention or purpose existed in the mind of God
that His fallen creatures should be left to perish.
There never was a period in which He did not
love and compassionate ourselves, though neces¬
sarily always hating our sins. His love to us
j was not caused by the interposition of Christ on
our behalf; Christ’s interposition was, on the
contrary, the effect of the Father’s love. God’s
grace was not purchased by Christ. If, indeed,
it had been so, it would have ceased to be
grace. The love, the grace, the pity afterwards
so marvellously manifested towards us, existed
in the mind of the Father from all eternity.
Instead of Christ being the procuring cause of
the love of God, He simply, by the substitution
of Himself in our room, opened up a way
whereby God could, consistently with His law and
justice, give an expression or manifestation of
! that love towards His fallen creatures, which was
8
ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS
alike eternal and infinite. Justice forbade any
practical exhibition of the love of God towards
our ruined race, until ail ample reparation had
been made to that law which, in the persons of
our first parents, we had all so fearfully violated.
Such reparation was made prospectively when
Jesus voluntary undertook to become incarnate,
to obey, to suffer, and to die in our nature and
our room. Then the Father could furnish the
universe with an expression or manifestation of
His eternal love and compassion to our race;
and then, accordingly, a proclamation of mercy
was, for the first time, made to a world weltering
in its blood.
On a theme so very solemn and mysterious, it
behoves ignorant and fallible creatures to speak
with profound reverence, and with the utmost
circumspection. We feel that we are not acting
inconsistently with this frame of mind, when
we say that we can conceive it quite possible
that God could have loved us from all eternity,
as well as infinitely, even had Christ not
undertaken to become incarnate, and to suffer,
and to die for us; only in that case there
could have been no manifestation, no expression
OF THE FATHER’S LOVE.
9
of the Father’s love. God’s compassion towards
ns would have been quite compatible with our
being left to perish in our guilt, inasmuch as
His justice would have interposed an insuperable
obstacle to the practical exhibition of His love
and pity, so long as no reparation had been made
to the law which we had violated.
This view of the commingling of the divine
attributes of love and pity with the attribute of
justice, is daily illustrated in the administration
of our judicial affairs. There is no sight more
common than that of an earthly judge shewing
the deepest compassion for the poor criminal
trembling at the bar—even shedding tears in
profusion for the guilty and unhappy man, when
passing sentence on him. Still the law must
be allowed to take its course. The claims of
justice must be asserted. Its inexorable exac¬
tions must be complied with. The punishment
must be, and is, inflicted. In like manner, it
can easily be conceived that God might from all
eternity have loved and pitied our fallen race,
md yet not been morally able to prove in a
Practical manner His love and His pity, because
i jl i
10 adequate atonement had been made for our
10
ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS
guilt. With all reverence be it spoken, God is
necessarily guided in His government of the
world by certain fixed moral principles, just as
the judges of the land regulate their proceedings
by those clearly defined and universally recog¬
nised principles which form an essential part of
the British constitution. As a moral governor,
therefore, He could not manifest love in a prac¬
tical manner, or extend mercy, to creatures who
had revolted against Him, without an adequate
reparation being made for the outrage which
we had committed on His authority. On the
contrary supposition, His compassion would have
been exercised towards us at the expense of His
justice. But an atonement has been made.
The law's demands have been met. Justice can
exact no more; and therefore a way has been
opened up through which the love and pity of
God towards His rebel creatures on earth can
be manifested in their salvation. Christ hath
suffered in our room. He bare our sins in His
own body on the tree, and therefore God can be
just, and yet the justifier of the ungodly.
It cannot be too often or too emphatically
/
repeated, that scriptural views on this moment-
OF THE FATHER’S LOVE. ] 1
' I
*us matter are of the greatest importance. As
/ has been already remarked, they very deeply
involve the glory of God the Father, and have
i close and constant bearing on the holiness and
happiness of His people. Those who have fallen
auto the error which we are seeking to expose,
generally do so from confounding the sinner
with his sins. God ever has been, and, of
/necessity, ever must be, angry with sin; but
(that does not imply anger towards the sinner
himself. Love and compassion for a fallen
j creature are perfectly reconcilable with indigna¬
tion at his sins. If God could not love us while
n our sins, He never could have loved us at all.
But He did love us while in our sins, and hath
manifested His love, in that while we were yet
sinners Christ died for us. He loved us from
all eternity; and it cannot be too often reit¬
erated that His love was wholly spontaneous. It
was not purchased by anything which Christ
4 id in the councils of eternity, or undertook to
iccomplish. It had no other cause than in the
Father’s own sovereign, eternal pleasure.
And it is to this eternal, uncaused, unpur-
ihased love of God that we owe the glorious
] 2 ETEENITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS
scheme of redemption. That wondrous plar s
was of God’s devising. It originated entirely 6
in the mind of the Father. This is a truth o s
inexpressible importance, and of unutterable
sweetness to the believer. Let us endeavour tf
f
make it clear as the light of the meridian sun
in order that we may hold it fast, and continu >
ally realise its consoling and sanctifying power"
Blessed be God, there is no truth within the >
compass of divine revelation which admits of
more ample or more conclusive proof. Let ud i
seek to pour upon it a portion of that flood of \
light with which it is so largely illuminated
throughout the Word of God. Let us endeavour 5 ,|
to make the fact so clear, that no simple-minded
Christian can ever hereafter entertain any doubt
on the subject,—that the birthplace of the scheme
of man’s salvation was in the deepest recesses of
the Father’s loving heart; and that, so far from j
Christ kindling in the heart of God that bound¬
less love wherewith He has loved us, He but f
furnished the Father with an opportunity of j
practically manifesting the love to a lost world,
which glowed in His bosom from all eternity.
First of all, then, let it be remarked, that it |
OF THE FATHER’S LOVE.
1 o
jis God himself who said, when consulting with
arist in the councils of eternity as to how a
bel world could be restored to the possession
, the Divine favour, “ Deliver from going down
to the pit; for I have found a ransom.” This
the first intimation which is made to us of
e plan of redemption through Christ. The
ords are remarkable. God is the speaker,
id He says, U I have found a ransom.” The
rm “ found ” clearly implies that He had been
Peking to find a ransom. In the unfathomable
epths of the deliberations which had been going
in His own infinite and eternal mind, He had
:en considering how a rebel race could be res-
ed from the dismal doom to which they had
bjected themselves, and from which they could
>t escape by any other means than the exhi-
^j.tion of Almighty power. His holiness and
Hs justice required that satisfaction should be
ide for the outrage which had been committed
these essential attributes of His nature. If,
th the deepest awe on our spirits, we may use
e expression,—it was while God was appa-
ntly for a little moment at a loss as to how He
Lid savingly manifest His love and compas-
al
u
ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS
sion to His fallen creatures, and yet .the deman
of a broken law be fully met, that Christ caT 11 ^
spontaneously forward, and offered to becof^
our substitute. “Lo, here am I, send me °
were the gracious words of Jesus; words whi< 1(
plainly imply that God was at that very mome^
most anxious to rescue our ruined race. “ SeP'
me!” As if Jesus had said to God, “You a 1
looking out for a way whereby sinners may v
saved, and be restored to the favour which th
have forfeited; I willingly and joyfully unde
take to assume their nature, and to obey t
law on their behalf, and to suffer and die
their stead. Send me ! ”
So, again, we see the same glorious truth, tf J
man’s redemption originated in the mind of G<
the Father, as the fruit of His infinite and ete
nal love to us, brought out with surpassii
clearness, when the Lord Jesus, in the remote
ages of a past eternity, addressed Him in JJj
words, “ Lo, I come: I delight to do thy w
0 my God; thy law is in my heart.” NothL,
could be more evident from the texts just quot l
than the fact that God, previous, if we may ;
speak, to this period in the annals of eternifi
ill
OF THE FATHER’S LOVE.
15
willed the salvation of the human race; at
least, of as many as should be by His grace in
time disposed to receive salvation from Him. It
was to do the will of His Father, as will here¬
after be fully shewn, that Christ came into the
world in the fulness of time, and in the likeness
of sinful flesh, and for sin to offer the sacrifice of
Himself. God’s law is declared to be written in
the Redeemer’s heart; the law, in this case,
meaning the purpose or pleasure of God respect¬
ing the salvation of a lost world.
Again, we are told from the lips of God him¬
self, in Jeremiah, in the third verse of the thirty-
first chapter, that He has loved His people with
an everlasting love, and that therefore with
loving-kindness had He drawn them; so that
there never was a moment in the eternity that is
past, in which God did not love His people;
while the expression, “ with loving-kindness have
I drawn thee,” manifestly points to His devising
the plan of their redemption, and seeing that
jpHorious plan carried into execution.
'a, Let it also be ever remembered, that God is
u ove. His name and His nature are love, a
'.fjict which necessarily involves the idea that
16
ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS
His love was eternal,—co-existent, speaking
after the manner of men, with His own being.
Consequently the love of God could not have
been caused, procured, or purchased by any¬
thing said or done on the part of Christ. So
far, indeed, from Jesus having kindled the flame
of infinite affection which burns in the bosom
of God towards us, it was because God so loved
the world, that Christ came down from heaven
to die for us. “ In this was manifested the love
of God towards us, because that God sent his
only-begotten Son into the world to be a propi¬
tiation for our sins.”
Equally conclusive, in proof both of the eter¬
nity of the Father's love and of His having
devised a way whereby its blessed effects might
be enjoyed by us, is that most delightful and
precious passage of scriptural truth in the third
chapter and sixteenth verse of the Gospel by
John, where we are told that “ God so loved
the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth on him should noip!
perish, but have everlasting life.” What lar
guage could more fully or more forcibly expres
the great truth that God loved the world in Hi
«|
11
>2
OF THE FATHER’S LOVE.
17
own eternal mind, and that the advent of Christ
to our earth was the consequence and not the
cause of that great love wherewith He has loved
us ?
The eternity of the Father’s love, and His
authorship of the scheme of man’s redemption,
are likewise very explicitly set forth in the fifth
chapter and nineteenth verse of the Second
Epistle to the Corinthians, where Cod is repre¬
sented as being in Christ, or through Christ,
reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing
to men their trespasses. It is true that this
work of reconciling sinners to Himself can only
take place in time; yet it is no less clear, that
what is done in time by the Father, must be the
consequence of what He predetermined should
be done from all eternity. The Word of God is
most explicit on this point,—that everything
which comes to pass was foreordained from all
eternity by the Father.
Reference has already been made to the uni-
jrm testimony of Scripture to the fact, that
•od loved His people from all eternity. It is
)t necessary to multiply passages to the same
feet. Two or three will suffice in addition to
B
18 ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS •
the one already given, wherein it is said, “ I
have loved thee with an everlasting love; and
therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn
thee.” In harmony with this are the passages,—
“His mercies are from everlasting” as well as ^
“to everlasting on all that fear him;” “Whom
he did foreknow, them he also did predestinate
to be conformed to the image of his Son.”
Here the predestination and the foreknowledge
are contemporaneous: and as God’s foreknow¬
ledge was necessarily from all eternity, so His
predestinating or electing love must have been
also eternal. “ Blessed be the God and Bather
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us
and chosen us in him before the foundation of
the world, and predestinated us into the adop¬
tion of children by Jesus Christ to himself,
according to the good pleasure of his will, to
the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he
hath made us accepted in the Beloved.” Here
we not only have God represented as having
from eternity chosen His people to salvationJ
but as having done it according to the good plea'
sure of His will—words which conclusively prove |
that the plan of man’s salvation originated soleb
a
OF THE FATHEE’S LOVE.
19
i
l
I
/
\
(
in the mind of the Father from all eternity. He
was under no constraint to love us, otherwise
than that which was moral and innate in Himself.
He loved us with a perfect spontaneity of affec-
f tion. He was not moved to the love with which
He regarded us in eternity; He loved us because
it so seemed good in His sight. In happy keep¬
ing with the passages we have quoted is that
portion of the inspired book wherein we are told
that it is “ according to the eternal purpose which
he (God the Father) purposed in Christ,” that
sinners are saved. God’s purpose, therefore, to
save a ruined race was not, as before remarked,
the effect of the interposition and entreaties of
Christ on our behalf, but was formed from all
eternity in the Father’s own mind, and was to be
manifested in the fulness of time in the person
and work of His Son. We are moreover told,
that eternal life was in the Father, and was
manifested unto us by His Son,—thus making it
j,s clear as it were possible for any combination
>f words to do, that the eternal life which is
synonymous with salvation, had its origin in
dod’s own loving heart.
Much and most conclusive evidence of the
20
ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS
same unspeakably precious truth yet remains to j
be adduced. This we shall afterwards lay before 1
our readers, because we regard the doctrine of
the eternity of God’s love, and the plan of the
world’s redemption being traceable to the spon¬
taneous workings of His own infinite mind, as so
important, that neither the sinner nor the saint,
die unconverted nor the believer, can be too
firmly established in it. Though God the Father,
as already mentioned, hates the sins of the sinner,
and if he die impenitent will hate and punish
himself through all eternity, yet God has from
all eternity had compassion on a world lying in
wickedness, and provided a Saviour for the rescue
of all who are willing to accept salvation. It is,
therefore, the sinner’s own fault if he eventually
perish in his guilt.
With regard again to believers, they never can
enjoy that communion with God the Father
which is so essential to their comfort and progress
in the divine life, and which is more or less the
privilege of all who are converted, unless theiijj
minds be entirely delivered from the bondagd-
necessarily caused by that view of the character ip
IM
OF THE FATHER’S LOVE.
21
i
i
!
I
f
i
/
of God which represents Him as never having
had any compassion or love for His creatures,
until the Lord Jesus, by earnest and persevering
entreaties, pacified Him towards us, and changed
a frowning face to a smiling countenance. If we
would think of God under the influence of filial
feelings, if we would at all times approach Him as
dear children, we must regard Him as having been
our Father and our Friend from all eternity,
though His parental regards were not unfolded
until that era, in the councils of eternity, when
Christ offered to become a sacrifice for us; and
thus, by engaging to meet every claim which a
violated law could prefer against us, opened up a
door for the practical exhibition of that love
wherewith God loved us from all eternity. May
we all meditate more frequently, and we shall do
so more sweetly, on that greatest and most
glorious of all truths,—that God loved us and
felt compassion for us from all eternity; and
that to the Father’s eternal and infinite love
towards sinners, we owe the existence of that
wondrous plan of salvation which the angels
desired to look into from before the foundation
22 ETERNITY OF THE FATHER’S LOVE.
of the world, and which will be the subject of
admiration, adoration, and amazement to all the
hosts of heaven, throughout that eternity into
which, ere long, we shall be introduced.
CHAPTER II.
r -
f
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.
In our last chapter we adduced a variety of argu-
ments to prove that the love wherewith God
\ loveth His people was eternal and spontaneous,
I instead of being, as some say, the effects of
[ Christ’s interposition in the councils of eternity
on our behalf. We have also shewn that God
was the author of the plan of salvation. As the
subject is one of unutterable importance, and has
so immediate and powerful an influence on the
holiness and happiness of believers, it may be
well to advert to other passages of Scripture
which have a blessed bearing upon it.
Less directly, perhaps, but not less clearly is
God’s authorship of the plan of salvation, as
the effect of His love, set forth in those passages
of the sacred volume in which the Lord Jesus is
spoken of as the gift of God, and as being sent
24 ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS
by Him into the world, that the world may be r
saved by Him. “Thanks be unto God for his \
unspeakable gift" And so in that passage, ,
quoted in the previous chapter, “God so loved
the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, \
that whosoever believeth on him should not )
perish, but have everlasting life.” “He hath
made,” or given, “ him to be sin for us who knew
no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him.” “He that spared not his own
Son, but delivered him up,” or gave him, “ for us
all, how shall he not with him freely give us all
things ?” “ Whom God hath set forth,” or given,
“ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.”
“God commendeth his love towards us, in that,
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us;”—
which words manifestly mean, that God did spon¬
taneously love us from everlasting, and that in
the councils of eternity He resolved on giving His
Son, in the fulness of time, to die for sinners.
And here it may be remarked by way of paren¬
thesis, that God not only gave His Son to redeem
the world, but He hath given to Him all who shall
believe on His name to the remotest period of
time. “ My Father, who gave them me, is greater
OF THE FATHER’S LOVE.
25
t than I; and none shall be able to pluck them out
f my Father s hand“ That of all that the Father
lhath given me, I should lose nothing “I pray
ihot for the world, but for those whom thou hast
'given me“ Keep through thine own name those
^whoin thou hast given me ‘‘All that the Father
[hath given to me, shall come to me, and him that
? cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out“ As
jthou hast given him power over all flesh, that he
(should give eternal life to as many as thou hast
igiven him “ I have manifested thy name unto
the men which thou gavest me out of the worlll:
thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and
they have kept thy word.” “ Father, I will that
they also whom thou hast given me be with me
where I am.” In all these, and many other pas¬
sages which might be quoted, it is made as clear
as anything could be, that as all believers were
given by the Father to the Son, the scheme of
salvation must have originated in the mind and
heart of God from all eternity.
The same most precious truth is beautifully
and fully unfolded in those passages of Scripture
in which the Lord Jesus is represented as having
been sent by God the Father into the world for
26
ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS
the purpose of accomplishing the redemption c 1 ll
mankind. The mission of Christ to our eart 1
was not, strictly speaking, a self-appointed one
He was appointed to it by the Father, and henc
He invariably speaks of His incarnation and ap
pearance in our world as the results of God’s good
pleasure. The most remarkable statement of
Jesus in reference to this point is that in which
He says, “ I proceeded forth and came from God;
neither came I of myself, but he sent me.” To
the same effect the Lord Jesus repeatedly ex¬
pressed Himself in the days of His sojourn on
earth, “ My meat is to do the will of him that
sent me, and to finish his work “ He that
honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father
who hath sent him “ He that heareth my word,
and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlast¬
ing life, and shall not come into condemnation
“ I seek not mine own will, but the will of the
Father who sent me “ The works that I do, bear
witness that the Father has sent me;” “No one
can come unto me except the Father who hath
sent me draw him “ My doctrine is not mine,
but his that sent me“I must work the works
of him that sent me ; ” “ But now I go my way
to him that sent me“ Whom the Father hath
1
1
OF THE FATHER’S LOYE. 27
tanctified and sent into tlie world “ That they
clay believe that thou has sent me“ He that
I eeth me, seeth him that sent me “ For I have
i^ot spoken of myself; but the Father who sent
fine, he^gave me a commandment, what I should
pay, and what I should speak;” “The word is
i
pot mine, but my Father’s who sent me“ Be¬
cause they know not him that sent me “ And
jtliis is life eternal, that they might know thee the
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast
■sent;” “As thou has sent me into the world, so
have I sent them into the world“ That the
world may believe that thou hast sent me;” “ That
ithe world may know that thou hast sent me ;”
i“And these have known that thou hast sent me;”
“ As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.”
And in a variety of other passages the same
truth is set forth through the medium of the
apostles of our Lord. A few instances will
suffice. “ God sent not his Son into the world
to condemn the world; but that the world
through him might be saved; ” “ He whom
God hath sent speaketh the words of God; ”
“ God sent forth his Son, made under the law,
that he mmht redeem them that were under the
O
curse of the law;” “God sent his only begotten
.
28 ETERNITY AND SPONTANEOUSNESS j
Son into the world, that the world through hi^
might be saved; ” “ God sent forth his Son to
a propitiation for our sins ; ” “ For him whom l ie
hath sent have you believed not;" “That y e
believe on him whom he hath sent.”
But we need not proceed further in our proof!* 3
that the scheme of salvation had its origin in the'
heart of God from all eternity, and that it solelV
emanated from the infinite love and compassion 1
with which He regarded us millions of ages'
before the foundations of the world were laid;*
It is most important it should be believed, thafi
Christ did not reconcile God to us, but that He
merely provided a means whereby the loving r
heart of a loving God could be unfolded to us in :
all its infinitude of affection.
The glory of God, as has been before re^'
marked, is eminently involved in our having
right views on this point. Nothing could be
more dishonouring to the Father than to regard
Him as a being who was implacable towards us
until the Son interposed on our behalf. It dims
the glory of God’s love to a degree which it is
awful to contemplate, to regard it as a purchased
love. It is painful, as we have said before, to
«
OF THE FATHER’S LOVE. 29
Link that ever such a sentiment should have been
fr
any one to carry the same views regarding tie
origin of the plan of man’s redemption with hin
to heaven, he would feel unable to engage wifi,
the same cordiality and delight as the rest of tie
ransomed throng, in those ascriptions of praise
to God the Father with which the celestial
regions will ever ring, and of which ascriptiois
the chief will be—“Not unto us, 0 Lord, no-,
unto us, but unto thy name be the glory.” All
the saints of God now sing, “Oh, to grace”—
to God the Father’s free, uninfluenced grace—•
“how great a debtor!” but the redeemed and.
glorified multitude which no man can number,
will sing that song in far loftier and louder
strains, because they will then have much clearer
views of the free, unpurchased, innate love of
God, than they ever could have had on earth.
They will trace all that they are, and all that they
ever will be—all the happiness they enjoy, and
all the glory to which they look forward—far as
the eye can reach through the vista of eternity,
to the infinite, spontaneous love of the Father,
felt in all its overflowing fulness, unnumbered
ages before the worlds were formed.
j CHAPTER IIL
r»
I _
fl
✓ THE FATHER’S LOVE AS DISPLAYED IN BEING
HIS people’s GOD.
In the two preceding chapters we have endea¬
voured to prove that God’s love to His people
was from all eternity; we have also sought to
shew that the great plan of man’s salvation
originated spontaneously and entirely in the
mind of God the Father, and that consequently
our redemption could not be, as some, by a
strange misapprehension of revealed truth, have
said it is,—the effect of the Saviour’s undertak¬
ing our otherwise hopeless cause. We have
likewise shewn, that the love of God to His
people was eternal, and altogether irrespective
of His Son’s interposition on their behalf. In
order to place this glorious and gracious truth
in a light so clear as that the simplest-minded
Christian may be able to comprehend it, the
32 THE father’s love as displayed
fact was dwelt upon with all the emph; )r
which we could give to our words,—that e ie
if Jesus had never voluntarily offered to becc 11
our Saviour, by taking our nature on Him, e o L
obeying and dying in our stead, the love of G e
to His creatures would have been as great as 3
now—revealed as it is in the person and wor*
of the Bedeemer—perceive it to be. The dif¬
ference would simply have been, that, in the
supposed case, we should have had no manifes¬
tation of the Bather’s love, and never could, in
any way, have benefited from it. Though His
love was infinite, yet so were His holiness and
justice ; and these, without the spontaneous offer
of the Son to become our substitute, would have
interposed insuperable and eternal barriers to the
practical exhibition of the love of God towards
us. God foresaw and felt this in all its force.
And it was because He did so, that all the re¬
sources of His infinite mind, if we may so express
ourselves, were put forth in the discovery of a
plan whereby those obstacles to the exhibition of
His love might be removed. There was only
one way in which this could be done. Even
infinite Wisdom—we say it with all reverence—
no
«•>.>
I
r
IN BEING HIS PEOPLE’S GOD.
1
yould devise no other. That wondrous way lay
n the fact of Christ taking our nature upon
.Jim, uniting it to His divine essence, and then
gearing in His own person the punishment due
jto our sins. Knowing what was in the merci¬
ful mind and loving heart of the Father, Christ
f reely offered to comply with the conditions
which the holiness and justice of God exacted;
and, in due time, carried His engagements on
our behalf into full effect.
This view of the character of God, this un¬
folding of His fatherly heart towards His crea¬
tures, is one which is eminently calculated to
inspire filial emotions in the hearts of all His
people. To trace back the authorship of the
plan of salvation to Him alone, and to realise
the great truth, that His love to our ruined race
was not purchased nor caused in any way by
what Christ did or undertook to do for us, are
considerations which are especially adapted to
minister comfort to God’s people, and to draw
out their hearts in holy affection and gratitude
to Him. But it is not enough for believers that
tney should thus be assured of the unbought
and perfectly spontaneous love of God from all
c
THE FATHER’S LOYE AS DISPLAYED
f 34> THE FATHER’S LOYE AS DISPLAYED
eternity, and through all the eternity that is
past,—they need no less, if they would joy an f.d
rejoice in Him, that they should be also assure id
of His love to them in time. There is mucj *e. So it
is alike with the sinner and the saint, in relation
to the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is, both to the
unconverted sinner and the troubled saint, a
plain, a broad, a direct way to God, as the refuge
of all who seek for safety in Him. The sinner
has but to believe and be saved; the saint has
but, through a renewed and vigorous exercise of
the faith already wrought in him by the Holy
Spirit, to repair anew by Christ to God as his
refuge, to have all his fears dispelled, and to find
joy and peace.
Let us glance at a few of the passages in the
UNFOLDED BY INANIMATE EMBLEMS. 149
Old Testament in which God is spoken of as the
refuge of His people. The first instance which
occurs of His being so spoken of is in that mag¬
nificent description of the glory and goodness of
God, which is given in the thirty-third chapter
and the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh verses
of the book of Deuteronomy,—“There is none
like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon
the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on
the sky. The eternal God is thy refuge, and un¬
derneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall
thrust out the enemy from before thee, and shall
say, Destroy them/’ The word refuge, as applied
to God, next occurs in the twenty-second chapter
and the second and third verses of the second
book of Samuel, where David is described as
breaking forth in songs of joy as he contemplated
his Creator under this emblem,—“The Lord is
my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; the
God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my
shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high
tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest
me from violence.” Again, in the ninth verse
of the ninth Psalm, we find David giving utter¬
ance to the gladness of his heart as he meditates
150
THE LOVE OF THE FATHER AS
on God under the emblem of a refuge,—“The
Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a
refuge in times of trouble.’' But the most
emphatic of all the references which the Psalm¬
ist makes to God as his refuge and the refuge
of God’s people, is in the first to the third verses
of the forty-sixth Psalm,—“ God is our refuge
and strength, a very present help in trouble:
therefore will not we fear, though the earth be
removed, and though the mountains be carried
into the midst of the sea; though the waters
thereof roar and be troubled, though the moun¬
tains shake with the swelling thereof.”
What a remarkable illustration is here pre¬
sented to us of David’s confidence in God, con¬
sidered under the emblem in question! Lan¬
guage could not more forcibly set forth the
greatness of the confidence which the Psalmist
reposed in his Maker as his refuge. So dear
to David’s heart was the contemplation of God
as his refuge, that, in the seventh verse, he breaks
out in the same strain of joyous confidence,—
“ The Lord of hosts is with us ; the God of Jacob
is our refuge.” And again, in the eleventh and
last verse, he repeats the words, “The Lord of
UNFOLDED BY INANIMATE EMBLEMS. 151
hosts is with us ; the God of Jacob is our refuge/’
This was the favourite psalm of Luther. In all
the great reformer’s perplexities and perils, he
pressed that psalm to his heart. Adopting the
language of David, and in the exercise of a
full faith, making it as entirely his own as
if it had been originally penned by himself, he
maintained a complete calm amidst the storms
of persecution by which he was assailed, and
remained undismayed when exposed to dangers
the most imminent, and even when in the hourly
expectation of a violent death.
Listen again to the language of David. In
the first verse of the fifty-seventh Psalm he thus
addresses God,—“Be merciful unto me, 0 God,
be merciful unto me; for my soul trusteth in
thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make
my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.”
And so in the sixteenth verse of the fifty-ninth
Psalm, we again hear him singing the high praises
of God as his refuge,—“ But I will sing of thy
power ; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the
morning: for thou hast been my defence and
refuge in the day of my trouble.” In the seventh
and eighth verses of the sixty-second Psalm, we
152
THE LOVE OF THE FATHER AS
find him speaking of his Maker under the same
emblem,—“ In God is my salvation and my glory:
the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in
God. Trust in him at all times ; ye people, pour
out your heart before him : God is a refuge for
us.” Another instance, in the first and second
verses of the ninety-first Psalm, ought to be given,
because it is a striking one. It forcibly expresses
the sense of security which David enjoyed, be¬
cause he regarded God as his refuge,—“ He that-
dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High,
shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge, and my
fortress : my God ; in him will I trust." But we
must give one more illustration from the Psalms;
it will be the last, but it is one of the most ex¬
pressive to be found in any portion of the inspired
volume. It is contained in the fourth and fifth
verses of the one hundred and forty-second Psalm,
—“ I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but
there was no man that would know me : refuge
failed me; no man cared for my soul. I cried
unto thee, 0 Lord: I said, Thou art my refuge
and my portion in the land of the living." There
is something very remarkable not only in the
UNFOLDED BY INANIMATE EMBLEMS. 158
words which have been quoted, but in the whole
psalm. David is described by himself as having
been in deep distress. His very spirit was over¬
whelmed within him. In that season of sadness
and sorrow he looked around on the earth for
sympathy and succour ; but he found none. All
worldly friends, all worldly resources failed him.
It was then that he cried unto the Lord, address¬
ing Him as his only refuge. He did not cry to
God in vain. His prayer was heard and answered;
for in the concluding verse of the psalm we hear
him saying,—“ The righteous shall compass me
about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me. ,;
His was the prayer of faith ; he felt perfectly sure
that the aid which he so urgently needed, and
which he so earnestly sought, would be afforded.
See in this the inexpressible importance of a
strong faith. It enables the saint to realise the
blessing which he supplicates before it is actually
in his possession. So true is it, that “ faith is
the evidence of things not seen, the substance of
things hoped for.”
Synonymous with the word refuge, as applied
to God, is the phrase, Hiding-place , when spoken
of in reference to Him. David accordingly ad-
154
*
THE LOVE OF THE FATHER AS
dresses God, in the seventh verse of the thirty-
second Psalm, in these words,—“ Thou art my
hiding-place; thon shalt preserve me from trouble;
thou shalt compass me about with songs of de¬
liverance.’' And again, we find him addressing
God as his hiding-place in the hundred and four¬
teenth verse of the hundred and nineteenth Psalm,
—“ Thou art my hiding-place and my shield: I
hope in thy word.”
There is, too, a substantial sameness of import
in these other terms which are applied to God,
when He is compared to a Strong Tower , a High
Tower , a Stronghold, a Shield. All these expres¬
sions indicate the same thing,—the protecting
love of God, and the consequent security of His
people when thus specially under His eye, and
shielded by His almighty arm. How unutter¬
ably blessed it must be to have such a God to
whom we may at all times repair, and under
whose protecting care we shall be safe, no matter
how numerous and powerful, or how malevolent
and active, our enemies may be ! All the attri¬
butes of God are with and for us. It is in them
—in His wisdom, His omniscience, His omnipo¬
tence, His omnipresence, His goodness—that all
UNFOLDED BY INANIMATE EMBLEMS. 155
our confidence for the present, and all our hopes
for the future, centre and rest. If such a God as
we have sought to describe, by means of His own
inspired Word, be for us, who can be against us?
None effectually so. Neither Satan, nor the
world, nor the worst of all our foes,—our own
corrupt hearts, will finally or completely prevail
in their hostility to us. What greater proof
could we have of the love with which God re¬
gards us in our present state of being, than when
He condescends to represent Himself to us by
such assuring and endearing emblems as those to
which we have referred ?
The emblems illustrative of what God is to
His people to which we have alluded, are chiefly
intended to impress the saints with a sense of
their safety in Him. There is another emblem,
which has often proved the source of peace to
many a tried saint, namely, that of God as a
Dwelling-place. “ Lord,” says the Psalmist,
“thou hast been our dwelling-place in all genera¬
tions.” The expression, while involving the idea
of perfect security in God, implies something
more. It includes the idea no less of delight in
God,—of being at home or happy in Him. When
156
THE LOVE OF THE FATHER AS
we choose a place for our abode, we are presumed
to take a pleasure in that abode. Home is said
to be the most attractive word in the English
language. Those who repair to God as their
dwelling-place, find a home in Him, and enjoy all
the blessings and comforts with which we in¬
variably associate the name. And what could
be more consoling in the midst of a world in
which there is so much to disturb and distress
the spirit, than to know that we have a dwelling-
place in God,—a home in His very heart ? We
may thus, in a sense, be said to dwell in God, as
He is said to dwell in us. Happy, thrice happy
the saint who habitually realises a consciousness
of this blessed interchange of dwelling-places,—
he dwelling in God, and God in him; he having
an abode in the very bosom of God, and God
dwelling by His Holy Spirit in his mind and
heart.
There is one more inanimate object to which
God is compared in Scripture, to which a brief
allusion ought to be made. It is that of a Sun.
“The Lord God,” says David, “is a sun and a
shield.” This is an emblem of God which is
replete with sweetness to the saints when the
UNFOLDED BY INANIMATE EMBLEMS. 157
Holy Spirit enables them to enter, in any mea¬
sure, into its blessedness. The natural sun, as
every one knows, is indispensable not only to
the happiness of all creatures, but is absolutely
necessary no less to their very existence. The
sun, under God, is the great source of life as well
as of light and of heat; and as he generates, so
he preserves the life of men and of animals.
Pluck the sun from the firmament, and all animal
life in the world would perish. As God, there¬
fore, is the source and sustainer of all spiritual
life, He is appropriately and happily compared to
the sun. The sun, too, is the fountain of natural
light. Without him all would be darkness of
the deepest and densest kind,—a darkness worse
than that which came over the land of Egypt—
a darkness surpassing that which enveloped the
earth when Jesus, the God of nature, the Maker
of the sun, and his preserver in the course which
he daily runs, expired on the cross. In this
respect also God is fitly compared to the sun.
He alone is the source of spiritual light. He
causes the light first to flash on our souls, en¬
abling us to discern spiritual things; and it is
by the continued influences of His Spirit that the
158 THE LOVE OF THE FATHER AS
light is preserved in our minds and hearts. We
are in ourselves darkness, and who can tell how
great is that darkness ? But in the Lord we are
light. When He pours a flood of light into our
souls, we no longer walk in darkness, but become
the children of the light
As the natural sun is the source of warmth
and of comfort, so in that respect likewise, there
is a peculiar propriety in comparing God to the
sun. All our spiritual comfort springs from
God; all our spiritual happiness has its origin
in Him. Out of God all would be cold, cheer¬
less, miserable beyond the power of the mind to
conceive, just as the realms of nature are, when¬
ever the light of the sun is not seen and his
presence is not felt. God, therefore, could not
be more appropriately compared to any object,
in reference to what He is to His people, than to
the sun. And all the saints of God rejoice in
Him in that character, not only in life but in
death. It is no less as their Sun than as their
Shepherd that they behold, and joy in, God, as
they pass through the valley and shadow of
death,—“Yea, though I walk/' as all the saints of
God will sooner or later have to do, “through
UNFOLDED BY INANIMATE EMBLEMS. 159
the valley and shadow of death, yet I will fear no
evil/' God's gracious presence will lighten that
dark valley, will cheer that otherwise comfortless
path. Even in eternity, too, God will still be a
sun to His saints. In heaven, we are told, there
shall be no night, because God is to be the sun
or source of light to His glorified people. “ Their
sun will no more go down: for the Lord will
be their everlasting light, and their God their
glory.”
All the emblems to which we have adverted,
as shewing what God is to His people, are strik¬
ingly illustrative of the love which He bears to
them. They are all calculated to set forth the
solicitude and affection with which He regards
His saints while passing along the rugged road
which leads to Himself and to glory. They all,
more or less, forcibly shew, that it is His good
pleasure that His people should not only be safe
and happy in Him, but that they should have an
habitual consciousness of their security, and a
consequent unspeakable peace of mind.
It cannot be necessary we should dwell on
the fact, that in coming to God as we are invited
to do, to realise in our soul’s sweet experience
ICO
THE LOVE OF THE FATHER AS
what He is to His people under the various em¬
blems in which His grace and glory are thus
revealed to His saints,—we can only do so
through Christ, just as when we have come to
God, and rest and repose in Him, it can only be
as we see Him, and find Him to be, in Christ.
But thus beholding God the Father in Jesus the
Son, and thus coming to God through Christ,
every saint ought to feel unutterably blessed.
The great mistake which so many of God’s people
make is, that they rest in Christ instead of in
God as He is in Jesus. It is no part of the
gospel plan that they should rest in Christ. We
are to come to God through Christ, and to rest
in God as He is in His beloved Son. If you, my
Christian reader, would embody in your conduct
what God has revealed in His Word respecting
Himself and His Son, you must not regard Christ
as your halting place, but must press on until
you have come to God himself. Christ is not
the end,—God is the end. Christ is but the way.
This He says Himself,—“I am the way;” “No
one cometh unto the Father but by me.” Then
you are, according to His words, to come unto
tne Father. You are to go to the very foot of
UNFOLDED BY INANIMATE EMBLEMS. 161
the Father’s throne. Nay, you are to go even
further than that; you are to have a still closer
intimacy with God. You are to come to the
very heart of God. Your heart and His must be
brought into the most tender and intimate con¬
tact. It is thus only that you will, in any ade¬
quate measure, discern those manifestations of
the overflowing affection there is in His fatherly
bosom, which it is the object of these pages to
bring vividly before your minds. And if you
but thus seek to have correct views of what God
in Christ is, and of your duty towards Him in
the way of holy nearness to and habitual inter¬
course with Him,—you will have such perceptions
and impressions of the great love wherewith He
has loved His people, as will ever make you
happy hereafter, instead of regarding Him in
that spirit of dread and bondage which brings
unutterable wretchedness into the souls of so
many of His saints.
T
CHAPTER Vn.
THE LOVE OF GOD AS MANIFESTED IN THE MISSION
OF CHRIST TO OUR WORLD.
Keference has more than once been made in
previous chapters to the fact, which every Chris¬
tian has, at some time or other, felt in his own
painful experience, that he has seen a more
abounding graciousness and a greater tenderness
of affection in the Lord Jesus Christ, than in
God the Father. And hence the people of God,
as has been before observed, instead of seeking,
as they ought to do, repose and happiness in the
bosom of the Father, turn away from Him, and
seek for rest and comfort in the Son. It cannot
be too emphatically impressed on Christians, that
this is not the scriptural order of things. It is
a complete reversal of it. It cannot be too often
01 earnestly brought before the minds of God’s
people, that the scriptural order of things is
THE LOVE OF GOD.
163
that they should not rest solely and finally in
Jesus, but that they should ascend through Him
up to God the Father, and repose in Him as
their God, their Father, their Portion, their AIL
It is only when the saints have clearly seen this
to be the will and way of God, and they have
been led by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, and
the aids of Divine grace, to act in accordance
with it, that they can either glorify God or enjoy
any real peace of conscience.
There is nothing which can be so much cal¬
culated to enlighten the mind of the believer in
reference to the relationship of God and of
Christ to himself, nor anything which could be
more eminently calculated to lead the soul up,
through Christ, to God, that it may rest and
repose in the bosom of the Father,—as the con¬
templation of the Lord Jesus in the character
of the manifester or revealer of God. It was to
unfold the overflowing fulness of affection to¬
wards us that there is in the heart of God, that
Christ came into the world, and that He lived
and laboured, and spoke and acted, during the
period of His sojourn on earth, and at last died
on the cross. On this point there is an ampli-
1 G4 THE LOVE OF GOD AS MANIFESTED IN
tude and explicitness of scriptural testimony for
which the people of God cannot be too thankful.
There is no uncertainty on the subject. On
a matter so inexpressibly important, the words
and the works of Christ speak with a precision,
a fulness, and an emphasis which leave nothing
to be desired. In the utterances which came
from the heart of Jesus, we but see the expres¬
sions of the heart of God the Father. In every
word He spoke, in every action He performed,
Christ only manifested the affection of God
towards us. In all that Jesus said, we ought
to hear the voice of God; in all those works
of mercy which He wrought, we ought to discern
the hand and the heart of the Father.
Let us, for a brief period, listen to the teach¬
ing of the Lord Jesus himself on this most pre¬
cious portion of divine truth. But even if we
had no express statements of our Lord on the
subject, His views and wishes might be infer-
entially deduced from those observations which
fell from Him in the course of His public minis¬
try, when declaring that He came into the world
to manifest the Father to mankind. If all His
words breathed tenderness and love to the world.
THE MISSION OF CHRIST TO OUR WORLD. 165
if there was a savour of affection and mercy in
every act He performed, surely from these facts
it might be safely inferred, taken in conjunc¬
tion with His express declarations on the sub¬
ject,—that He came forth from the Father, and
was sent into the world by the Father, and ap¬
peared among men, to manifest God unto them.
If, as He tells us, He dwelt in the bosom of God
from all eternity—that He and His Father were
one—that He came to do His Father’s will—that
He must be about His Father’s business,—by
which we know He meant making God known
to the human race,—we may most surely infer
that there was a perfect sympathy between His
Father and Himself in all the exhibitions of love
and mercy which the Saviour made on earth.
It is an awful error to suppose, as some do,
that while Jesus sojourned here below, His great
mission was to propitiate or reconcile God to
sinners. God was already propitiated or recon¬
ciled, and Jesus came into the world in conse¬
quence, to make known the great fact, that God
was so propitiated or reconciled, and to urge
sinners to be reconciled to God.
But we are not left to mere inferences, how-
166 THE LOVE OF GOD AS MANIFESTED IN
ever clearly deducible, with regard to the great
truth, that Christ came into the world to manifest
God to mankind. The assurances to this effect
from Christ’s own lips are so very explicit and
so very emphatic, that nothing could be more
conclusive.
Let us glance at those statements or declara¬
tions made by the Lord Jesus himself, as given
in the records of the New Testament, that He
came into the world to manifest the Father.
And let us further take them in the chronologi¬
cal order in which they are to be found in the
pages of the evangelists. The first direct inti¬
mation of this great and most gracious truth,
made by Jesus himself, is to be found in the
tenth chapter and fortieth verse of the Gospel
according to St Matthew, where He saith, ad¬
dressing His disciples, who were at the time lis¬
tening to His words,—“He that receiveth you,
receiveth me; and he that receiveth me, receiveth
him that sent me.” Here is an announcement of
a perfect identification of feeling and sentiment
between the Father and the Son, as regards the
purposes for which the latter came into the world.
Whoever received Christ and His message, would
THE MISSION OF CHRTST TO OUR WORLD. 167
receive God himself, because Christ came to
manifest God, and consequently the message
which He delivered was the message of God to
mankind. In the eleventh chapter and from the
twenty-fifth to the twenty-seventh verses of the
Gospel according to St Matthew, we have another
very full unfolding of the same truth. Jesus
addresses His Father in these words,—“I thank
thee, 0 Father, Lord of heaven and earth, be¬
cause thou hast hid these things from the wise
and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.
Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy
sight.” So that it was God himself, in the
words and works of Christ, that had all this time
been revealing the precious things which are
referred to in this verse. The Father spoke by
and through the Son. He himself was seen and
made known in the things, hitherto hid, which
Jesus was then engaged in revealing. The
twenty-seventh verse is, on this point, in happy
harmony with the two verses which precede it,—
“ All things are delivered unto me of my Father :
and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father;
neither knoweth any man the Father, save the
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal
168 THE LOVE OF GOD AS MANIFESTED IN
him ” All things, Jesus tells us, were delivered
to Him of His Father. He said nothing, He did
nothing, but as He was moved thereto by God.
He was but the medium through which His
Father was making Himself known to the world.
No man, He added, knew the Father, but he to
whom Jesus should reveal Him. So that to
manifest God to His creatures was the main or
most important part of that mission which Christ
came into the world to fulfil.
In the sixteenth chapter and seventeenth verse
of the Gospel according to St Matthew, we hear
Jesus saying to Simon, in that memorable,
though brief conversation which they had toge¬
ther as to what Simon’s opinion was of Christ,
after Simon had confessed Him to be the Christ,
the Son of the living God,—“ Blessed art thou,
Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in
heaven.” So that there was so close a union, so
complete an identification, so perfect a sympathy,
between God and Christ, that the Father is here
represented as revealing Himself to Simon,—
clearly referring to the knowledge which the
THE MISSION OF CHEIST TO OUE WOELD. 169
latter had acquired through his intercourse with
the Redeemer.
In the eighteenth chapter and fourteenth verse
of the Gospel according to the same evangelist,
Jesus, in referring to little children, and to all
grown-up persons who had, in spirit, become,
through the transforming power of Divine grace,
like unto little children, says,—“ Even so it is
not the will of your Rather which is in heaven,
that one of these little ones should perish.”
This shews that God willed, from all eternity,
the salvation of all who should believe in His
Son; for no wish of God, in a matter so inex¬
pressibly momentous, could have its origin in
the mind of God in time. It is plain, therefore,
that Christ came into the world in the fulness
of time, to make more clearly known than it
ever had been before, or ever otherwise could be,
that it was the will or wish of God the Rather,
that none of those of whom Jesus here spoke
should perish.
Very clearly and very sweetly is the same
truth brought out in the twentieth chapter and
twenty-third verse of the Gospel according to
1 70 THE LOVE OF GOD AS MANIFESTED IN
St Matthew, where Jesus, in answer to the ap¬
plication which the mother of Zebedee’s chil¬
dren made to Him, most probably with their
concurrence, that her two sons should sit the
one on His right hand and the other on His left
in that kingdom which she and they supposed
He was to set up. Addressing Himself to the
two sons, who, in answer to a question put by
Him to them as to their ability to bear the suf¬
ferings which He was about to endure, said they
were able,—He remarked :—“ Ye shall drink
indeed of my cnp, and be baptized with the
baptism that I am baptized with; but to sit on
my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to
give, but it shall be given to them for whom it
is prepared of my Father.” In the concluding
clause of the verse Jesus very clearly reveals
the great truth, that it is God the Father who
prepares heaven for all the saints. It was not
only His purpose to give them heaven and to
bring them to heaven, but it is actually pre¬
pared by Himself for their reception. This is a
development of the heart of God, made by Jesus
far too precious to be overlooked by His people.
Passing over other confirmations of the same
THE MISSION OF CHRIST TO OUR WORLD. 171
truth which are given by the evangelists Mark
and Luke, let us come to some of those more
striking ones which are furnished to us in the
Gospel by St John. Among the clearest of the
intimations made by Christ that He was mani¬
festing the Father, by acting in especial accord¬
ance with the Divine will, in virtue of specific
instructions from God to that effect, is the pas¬
sage in the fifth chapter and seventeenth to the
twentieth verses,—“My Father worketh hitherto,
and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the
more to kill him, because he not only had broken
the Sabbath, but said also that God was his
Father, making himself equal with God. Then
answered Jesus, and said unto them, Verily,
verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing
of himself, but what he seeth the Father do:
for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth
the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the
Son, and sheweth him all things that himself
doeth : and he will shew him greater works than
these, that ye may marvel.” Here is an explicit
intimation, that in the work which Jesus had
hitherto done He had acted in concert with God.
The Father was one with Him in all the words
172 THE LOVE OF GOD AS MANIFESTED IN
of grace which had fallen from His lips, and in
all the deeds of mercy which He had done. He
was but a co-worker with the Father; He was
but carrying out the views and wishes of God.
The Father was as much to be seen in what
Jesus said, and as much to be discovered in what
Jesus did, as He was Himself. God, in other
words, was in all this speaking and working
through and by Christ. Jesus was but the
manifester of the Father. In the fifth chapter
and thirty-sixth verse of the Gospel according
to St John, we find Jesus appealing to the works
which He performed as having been specifically
given Him of the Father to do,—“But I have
greater witness than that of John : for the works
which the Father hath given me to finish, the
same works that I do, bear witness of me, that
the Father hath sent me.” Nothing could be
more conclusive than this. No words could
more plainly set forth the fact, that all that
Jesus did on earth He did by the special ap¬
pointment of God, and that consequently He was
but the exponent of the good pleasure of His
Father, whom He thus manifested to men. The
same truth is clearly brought out in the forty-
THE MISSION OF CHRIST TO OUR WORLD. 173
third verse of the same chapter, where Jesus tells
the unbelieving Jews that He had not come in
His own, but in His Father’s name,—words
which clearly imply that He was only acting in
consonance with the purposes and pleasure of
God, or revealing the heart of God to those
among whom He ministered, in the words which
He addressed to them, and the works which He
performed amongst them.
Proceeding onwards to the eighth chapter and
the sixteenth to the nineteenth verses of the Gos¬
pel according to St John, we find an explicit
assertion of the perfect unity that subsisted be¬
tween the Father and the Son respecting the great
purposes for which Christ came into the world,
and also of the blessed truth that Jesus did shew
forth the Father,—“ I am not alone,” He says,
“but I and the Father that sent me.” Those to
whom these words were addressed could not fail
to perceive their meaning any more than they
could misconceive what followed, when He said,—
“ The Father that sent me beareth witness of me;”
and the still more expressive w T ords which suc¬
ceeded those just quoted,—“ If ye had known me,
ye should have known my Father also.” Nothing
174 THE LOVE OF GOD AS MANIFESTED IN
could more plainly reveal the important truth,
that Christ was a faithful representative of God,
and that the Father’s very heart was to be seen
in the words, the works, and the ways of Jesus.
But Christ was resolved that there should be no
possibility of the Jews failing to discern His mean¬
ing on a point so important, and therefore in this
address to them He reiterates the truth in terms
alike emphatic and explicit,—“ When,” He says,
“ ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye
know that I am he, and that I do nothing of my¬
self ; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak
these things. And he that sent me is with me:
the Father hath not left me alone ; for I do always
those things that please him.” These are memor¬
able as well as unmistakable words. And again,
to the same effect are the words of Jesus in the
thirty-eighth verse,—“ I speak that which I have
seen with my Father.” And yet again, in the
forty-second verse,—“ If God were your Father,
ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and
came from God; neither came I of myself, but he
sent me.”
Coming to the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel,
there will be found several clear developments of
THE MISSION OF CHRIST TO OUR WORLD. 175
the same truth, that Christ came forth from God
to manifest Him to the world. Let one suffice/
“ If,” He says, “ I do not the works of my Father,
believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe
not me, believe the works; that ye may know
and believe that the Father is in me, 'and I in
him” Most sweetly, as well as plainly, is the
same truth brought out on that memorable occa¬
sion which immediately preceded the closing
scenes of the Saviour’s earthly life. He then
prayed that God would glorify His own great
name in and by Himself. The answer to that
prayer was given in a voice from heaven, which
said,—“I have both glorified it, and will glorify it
again.” The glory of God’s grace was thus mani¬
fested in the life of our Lord. Nothing could be
more explicit than the enunciation of the same
truth, which is to be found in the twelfth chapter
and the forty-ninth and fiftieth verses of St John,
—“ For I have not spoken of myself; but the Fa¬
ther which sent me, he gave me a commandment,
what I should say, and what I should speak.
And I know that his commandment is life ever¬
lasting : whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the
Father said unto me, so I speak.”
176 THE LOVE OF GOD AS MANIFESTED IN
But we come now to that tender and touching
proof of the truth that Christ was the revealer of
the Father, which He furnished in the brief con¬
versation which He had, first with Thomas, and
afterwards with Philip, recorded in the fourteenth
chapter of St John. To the former Jesus said,—
ther, we can but select a few out of the many
portions of holy writ, of this nature, with which
both Testaments abound.
Adopting the same order of time as before, the
first passage of a gracious kind, as embodying the
words of God himself to His people, which I would
bring before my readers, is that recorded in the
sixth chapter from the twenty-second to the
twenty-seventh verses of the book of Numbers,—
“ And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak
unto Aaron, and unto his sons, saying, On this
wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, say¬
ing unto them, The Lord bless thee, and keep
thee; the Lord make his face shine upon thee,
and be gracious unto thee; the Lord lift up his
countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. And
they shall put my name upon the - children of
Israel, and I will bless them.” Though these
gracious words were primarily addressed to Aaron
and his sons, no believer will doubt that they are
equally meant for, and no less applicable to, the
people of God in every age and in every country.
246 DECLAEATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
To be blessed by God, to be kept by God, to have
the shillings of His face and the light of His
countenance, to have His name put on His people,
to receive peace from Him, and to have the assur¬
ance that He will be gracious unto them,—surely
it would not be easy, rather let me say it would
not be possible, to employ language better adapted
to convey to the minds of God’s saints a conclu¬
sive proof of the love which He cherishes towards
them. There is not a single blessing for time or
for eternity which is not comprehended in the
expressions of which the verses we have quoted
consist.
The next passage to which I would ask those
of the saints of God to look, who may at times,
if not habitually, have their fears and misgivings
respecting the tenderness of His love towards
them, will be found in the fifth chapter and the
twenty-ninth verse of the book of Deuteronomy,—
“ Oh that there were such an heart in them, that
they would fear me, and keep all my command¬
ments always, that it might be well with them,
and with their children for ever !” What could
more forcibly or fully unfold the loving heart of
God than to hear Him thus so emphatically ex-
OF HIS LOVE FOE HIS PEOPLE.
247
pressing a wish that His people might be so obe¬
dient to His will, and so walk in His ways, as
that He might thereby be able to bestow upon
them present and eternal blessings ? The words
seem to the writer to furnish such a view of the
greatness of God’s love, of the tenderness of God’s
affection, as ought to fill the believer’s mind with
amazement, and overwhelm his heart with joy
and gratitude. He who is glorious in holiness,
and fearful in praises, is here represented as if
actually agonising in His own mind for the hap¬
piness of His people.
Next, let us set before those saints and servants
of God who have their seasons of doubt and dark¬
ness respecting His love towards them, the assur¬
ance of His affection and of His tender solicitude,
which is given in that expressive portion of His
Word which is to be found in the forty-first chap¬
ter and from the tenth to the fourteenth verses of
the book of Isaiah,—“ Fear thou not; for I am
with thee : be not dismayed ; for I am thy God :
I will strengthen thee ; yea, I will help thee ; yea,
I will uphold thee with the right hand of my
righteousness. Behold, all they that were incensed
against thee shall be ashamed and confounded:
248 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
they shall be as nothing; and they that strive
with thee shall perish. Thou shalt seek them,
and shalt not find them, even them that contended
with thee: they that war against thee shall be as
nothing, and as a thing of nought. Tor I the
Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying
unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. Fear not,
thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel: I will
help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Kedeemer, the
Holy One of Israel/’ What a precious passage!
What gracious words from the lips of God him¬
self! What greater assurance could any saint
desire than is here given of the protecting care
and the tender affection which God extends to
His people ? Inexpressibly touching and conde¬
scending are also those words in the thirteenth
verse, in which Jehovah says,—“The Lord thy God
will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear
not; I will help thee/’ Seek, ye saints, to realise,
as far as you may, the marvellous amount of
meaning there is in these words. Picture to
yourselves, as far as your mental capacity will
enable you, the wondrous fact embodied in the
verse,—that the great Jehovah, the eternal and in¬
finite God, takes the right hand of the believer in
OF HIS LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE.
249
his season of darkness and of doubt, of difficulty
and of danger, and pours into his ear words of
encouragement and affection,—“ Fear not; I will
help thee/' What an astonishing exhibition of
the condescension of God, as well as of the un¬
utterable tenderness of His love!
In the same and the subsequent chapter there
are other assurances from God’s own lips of the
love with which He regards His people, while on
their journey through this waste howling wilder¬
ness ; but instead of transferring these to our
pages, we must content ourselves with a recom¬
mendation to our readers to refer to them in
their closets. In the forty-third chapter and
from the fourth to the seventh verses of the book
of Isaiah, there is one of the most express assur¬
ances given by Himself of God’s regard for His
people, which is anywhere to be met with,—
“Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou
hast been honourable, and I have loved thee:
therefore will I give men for thee, and people for
thy life. Fear not; for I am with thee: I will
bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee
from the west; I will say to the north, Give up ;
and to the south, Keei) not back : bring my sons
250 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LrPS
from far, and my daughters from the ends of the
earth ; even every one that is called by my name:
for I have created him for my glory, I have
formed him ; yea, I have made him.”
Mark the words in the fourth verse. God’s
people are “precious” in His sight. They are
gems in His estimation, jewels in His eye. And
as if that were not enough to express the place
they hold in His esteem, He says they are “ hon¬
ourable.” Even that is not all. God goes fur¬
ther still. He explicitly and emphatically says,
“I have loved thee.” In the seventh verse He
speaks of His saints as called by His name,
thereby setting forth the blessed truth, that He
rejoices in them as His. And - then they are
formed for His glory. What a thought, that
creatures such as we are, who, by our rebellion in
the days of our unregeneracy, habitually dishon¬
oured God, should be so changed by His grace,
should be so transformed by the power of His
Spirit, as that He himself can speak of His own
glory being, as it were, increased by us !
Omitting several intermediate passages, in
which God is described as speaking by His own
lips in accents of affection towards His people,
OF HIS LOVE FOE HIS PEOPLE.
251
we come to the forty-ninth chapter and the six¬
teenth verse of the book of Isaiah, in which, in
words which ought never to be absent from the be¬
liever’s mind, God says,—“ Behold, I have graven
thee upon the palms of my hands.” There is
a vastness of meaning in these remarkable words
which will never be completely grasped by any
finite mind. What an idea does it give of the
love and unceasing solicitude of God for us, to
think that His people’s names should be engraven
on the palms of His hands! It forcibly sets
forth the great fact, that God’s saints are never
for one moment absent from His thoughts, and
that they are so very dear to Him, that He has,
in a sense, made them a part of Himself. The
names of poor, worthless creatures such as we are
to be engraved on the palms of God’s hands!
The very idea—let it be repeated—more than
masters the comprehension of man.
Very precious to many a saint of God has
been that portion of divine truth which is con¬
tained in the fifty-fourth chapter and from the
fifth to the tenth verses of the book of Isaiah,—
“ Bor thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord
of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the
252 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
Holy One of Israel; the God of the whole earth
shall he be called. For the Lord hath called
thee as a woman forsaken, and grieved in spirit,
and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused,
saith thy God. For a small moment have I
forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I
gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face
from thee for a moment; but with everlasting
kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the
Lord thy Redeemer. For this is as the waters
of Noah unto me : for as I have sworn that the
waters of Noah should no more go over the
earth ; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth
with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains
shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my
kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall
the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the
Lord that hath mercy on thee.”
First of all, what could more forcibly convey
an idea of the greatness of God’s love to His
people, than to hear Him emphatically call Him¬
self their husband? There is no relationship
in life more close or tender than that of the
marriage connexion. And here the great and
glorious God, the Maker and the Monarch of
OF HIS LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE.
253
the universe, condescends to speak of Himself as
the husband of His saints. He is married to the
Church,—joined to her in bonds which never
can be broken. His people are represented as
a part of Himself. And then there are those
beautiful words in the seventh verse,—“Tor a
small moment have I forsaken thee; but with
great mercies will I gather thee.” If God
seemingly forsakes His saints—for He never does
so in reality—it is only for a moment, for a
small moment. Try, believer in Christ, to
realise in your own mind the expressiveness of
the phrase. A moment is the most minute
division of time of which we can form any idea;
but here God speaks of a small moment. It is
as if He had said,—“ You, my people, are so dear
to my heart, you have so large and so tender a
place in my affections, that I cannot for more
than a moment, even for a small moment, hide
my face from you, and thus appear to be angry
with you/’ And yet further, to assure the hearts
of His saints of the greatness and perpetuity of
His love, He even vouchsafes to say that He has
sworn that He will not be wroth with them nor
rebuke them. And as if even all this were not
254 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
sufficient, He condescends to amplify or reiterate
the assurance in another form not less forcible.
He adds, that “ the mountains shall depart,
and the hills be removed/'—meaning, that the
most stable things in creation may and will
undergo a change,—but that His tenderness or
love shall never be withdrawn or taken from His
people. As has been observed in adverting to
other passages of God’s holy oracles, which em¬
phatically express the strength and tenderness of
His affection for His saints, it were impossible to
bring the greatness of His love more vividly be¬
fore the minds of His people, than is done in the
verses in question.
One more passage from Isaiah is all that our
limits will permit us to give. It is a precious
passage, and will be proved to be so in the ex¬
perience of all who prayerfully peruse and medi¬
tate upon it—in proportion to the fulness with
which it is entered into,—“For thus saith the
Lord, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a
river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing
stream: then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne
upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees.
As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I
OF HIS LOYE FOE HIS PEOPLE. 255
comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in
Jerusalem/' What God here says to Jerusalem
of old, He still says to every individual saint.
The maternal relationship—that relationship
which has a tenderness in it which none but a
mother can appreciate—is here employed by God
to make manifest to the minds and hearts of His
saints the overflowing fulness and strength of
that affection with which they are regarded by
Him. “As one whom his mother comforteth,
so will I comfort you; and ye shall be com-
forted.” Most gracious words! They come
not only from the lips, but from the very inmost
recesses of the heart of God. Can any saint
who reads them have any more distrustful or
unkind thoughts of God the Father ? Is it
possible that any believer can enter fully into
their marvellous meaning, and yet doubt the
tender love with which God regards His people
in their journey through this world ?
There is another most touching exhibition of
the love of God to His people in their present
state of existence, in which—in the same book—
that love is brought before us in connexion with
a mother’s love to her children. In the fifteenth
256 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
verse of the forty-ninth chapter of Isaiah, God
the Father proves His love to ns by putting the
fact in the form of a question,—“ Can a woman
forget her sucking child, that she should not have
compassion on the son of her womb?” And He
himself answers the question,—“Yea, they (mo¬
thers) may forget, yet will I not forget thee.” I
make no observations here on these affectionate
words from the lips of God himself, because I
made a reference to them in a previous chapter.
The prophecies of Jeremiah are rich in specific
assurances of the regard which God bears to His
people, made directly from His own lips. A few
only are all that we can transfer to our pages.
In the thirty-first chapter and third verse we read
these words,—“ The Lord hath appeared of old
unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an
everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness
have I drawn thee.” In the ninth verse God thus
expresses Himself,—“ They shall come with weep¬
ing, and with supplications will I lead them: I
will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters
in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble ;
for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my
first-born.” These are the utterances of tendei
OF HIS LOVE FOE HIS PEOPLE.
257
affection. They shew, in the clearest manner,
what a large place the saints occupy in the loving
heart of their God and Father. In blessed keep¬
ing with the verses which have just been quoted
is the fourteenth,—“ And I will satiate the soul
of the priests with fatness, and my people shall
be satisfied with my goodness/’ The greatness
of God’s love to His people is strikingly brought
out in the twentieth verse, in the form of ques¬
tions, which are not put as if there were any
doubt about the preciousness of God’s people to
Him, but because there are cases, and this is one
of them, in which a question gives greater em¬
phasis to the sentiment intended to be conveyed,
than would be given to it by a simple affirmative.
“ Is Ephraim,” saith God, “ my dear son ? is he a
pleasant child? For since I spake against him,
I do earnestly remember him still; therefore my
bowels are troubled for him: I will surely have
mercy upon him.” How expressive of the love
of God to believers are these words! They are
not only “ dear ” to Him, but they are His “ sons.”
Every saint is not only a “ child ” of God, but a
pleasant child. How ennobling the thought!
To be not only sons of God, but dear sons;
E
258 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
not only children of God, but 'pleasant chil¬
dren !
Not quoting the gracious assurances which God
gives of His love to His people from the thirty-
first to the thirty-fourth verses of the same chap¬
ter, let us call attention to what is said in the
thirty-second chapter and from the thirty-eighth
to the forty-first verses of the book of Jeremiah,
—“ And they shall be my people, and I will be
their God: and I will give them one heart, and
one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the
good of them, and of their children after them:
and I will make an everlasting covenant with
them, that I will not turn away from them, to do
them good ; but I will put my fear in their hearts,
that they shall not depart from me. Yea, I will
rejoice over them to do them good, and I will
plant them in this land assuredly with my whole
heart, and with my whole soul.” Mark the words
in the fortieth verse,—“ And I will make an ever¬
lasting covenant with them, that I will not turn
away from them, to do them good.” Amazing
condescension, as well as affection, on the part of
God ! How it ought to touch the heart of the
believer, to think that God should thus stoop to
OF HIS LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE.
259
make a covenant with His creatures to do them
good! The more one meditates on the marvellous
words, the more he must be overpowered with
wonder and with love, that the great Creator and
Governor of the universe—He whom all the hier¬
archy of heaven serve day and night, and with
whose high praises the celestial regions unceas¬
ingly resound—should, as it were, come under a
positive engagement to bless His people, and do
them good !
Passing over the various books which intervene
between the prophecies of Jeremiah and the book
of Hosea, let us fix our attention for a few
moments on the second chapter, the nineteenth
and twentieth verses, of the latter book,—“ And
I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I wifi
betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in
judgment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies :
[ will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness;
and thou shalt know the Lord. 5 ' Here God re¬
presents Himself as sustaining towards His people
the most affectionate of all relationships. By
condescending to become betrothed to them, He
connects them with Himself by ties of the
strongest and most tender kind. We have often
2G0 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
had occasion, in referring to the loving character
of God with regard to His people on earth, to
express our wonder, delight, and gratitude at the
condescension which He displays; but in no one
part of the inspired volume is that condescension
more strikingly manifested than in this passage
from Hosea. God betrothed to a worm of the
dust—to an insect of an hour—'betrothed to an
habitual rebel against His government—to one
that would, if he could, expel Him from His
universe,—surely this is passing strange ! And
to be betrothed not for any period of time, or for
the whole of one’s earthly existence, but for ever,
—surely such condescension and love must make
their way to every believer’s heart! And then,
as if God would exhaust such language as would
most fully set our affection forth, He adds that
He betrothes Himself “in righteousness, and in
judgment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies.”
Again, the question, often asked before, recurs
with increased force,—Can any saint read such
words as these, and yet have a shadow of doubt
regarding the love that glows in God’s heart to
him ?
In happy keeping with the verses which have
OF HIS LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE.
261
jus -1 Wen quoted, are the words which are con¬
tained in the eleventh chapter and the eighth
verse of the same hook of Hosea,—“ How shall
1 give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver
thee, Israel ? how shall I make thee as Admah ?
how shall I set thee as Zeboim ? Mine heart is
turned within me, my repentings are kindled
together.” God is here represented as bearing
so intense an affection towards His people, as
that even all their departures from Him, and all
their forgetfulness of Him, cannot prevail upon
Him to withdraw His love from them. They
are so very dear to Him, that it would seem as if
it were an act of violence to His very nature to
deal with them as they had deserved, or to leave
them to the consequences of their own guilt and
folly. His heart, notwithstanding all they are
and all that they have done, is still drawn out
towards them by cords of affection which cannot
be broken.
In the sixth chapter and the second and third
verses of the book of Micah, there is an exhibi¬
tion of God’s tender affection and condescension
towards His saints, which has deeply touched, as
it well might, the hearts of many of His people,
262 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
—“ Hear ye, 0 mountains, the Lord’s controversy,
and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the
Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he
will plead with Israel. 0 my people, what have
I done unto thee ? and wherein have I wearied
thee ? testify against me/" Here the Most High
God, the great and glorious Jehovah, is repre¬
sented as appealing to inanimate creation, whether
His people have not been guilty of the greatest
ingratitude and neglect of Him, while His bosom
has been filled to overflowing with affection for
them, and His conduct has been everything that
the most ardent love could suggest. What a
marvellous display of the Divine condescension is
furnished in the fact, that God should stoop to
have a controversy with His creatures, or should
plead with them at all, when He might have
swept them, by a single breath of His mouth,
into the lowest regions of perdition! Surely
every saint of God ought to be utterly con¬
founded before his Maker, and be in utter
prostration at His feet, when he hears God
address him thus,—“ 0 my people, what have
I done unto thee ? and wherein have I wearied
thee ? testify against me.” Here, we say it with
OF HIS LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE. 2G3
all reverence, the high and lofty One who in-
habiteth eternity and the praises thereof, actually
asks His creatures to allow Himself to be
arraigned before their bar, and challenges them
to testify against Him if there be aught in His
conduct towards them of which they can justly
complain. He appears in the attitude of one
who feels as if He could not be happy if His
people should be estranged from Him, or think
unkindly or unjustly of Him. He goes, as it
were, after them, instead of letting them come
after Him. The Bible abounds with wondrous
displays of the love and condescension of God in
His gracious dealings with His people; but the
more I meditate on these two verses of Micah
7
the more does the conviction deepen in my mind,
—that they are amongst the most marvellous of
this class of passages in the inspired volume.
Somewhat similar is the purport of the third
chapter and the tenth verse of the book of
Malachi, wherein God calls on His people to
prove His love and His readiness to bless them,—
“ Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts,
if I will not open you the windows of heaven,
and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not
264 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
be room enough to receive it.” Not less pre¬
cious is the proof which God gives of His love
to His people, when, in the sixteenth verse of the
same chapter, He says,—“ Then they that feared
the Lord spake often one to another: and the
Lord hearkened, and heard it; and a book of
remembrance was written before him for them
that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his
name/' How sweet to think that God not only
hearkens to and hears the prayers of His people,
but that a book of remembrance should be writ¬
ten by Him of all their prayers, their praises,
and their good thoughts and actions, just as if
there were a merit in them, though we know
there is none ! Sweet, too, to the believer’s taste
is the verse which follows,—“ And they shall be
mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when
I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as
a man spareth his own son that serveth him.”
God does not here content Himself with saying
that His people shall be His, but calls them His
“jewels,” which, as before observed, is the most
expressive term which He could employ to con¬
vey to us the idea of their inexpressible precious¬
ness in His sight.
OF HIS LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE. 265
I. .
These are a few of the manifold passages of
Scripture in which God expresses, by His own
lips, the great love wherewith He loves His
people. Were it not for the blinding influence
of sin, the suggestions of our own evil hearts,
and the devices of Satan, it would be impossible
to read these precious words of God himself,
and any longer have a single doubt or misgiving
regarding the fervency of His affection for His
people. That the saints of God ought habitually
to recognise, and to rejoice in, their Creator’s
love, instead of doubting the tenderness of His
heart towards them, is proved by the fact, that
all the most eminent of His people, in all ages,
have been profoundly impressed with a sense of
the Father’s love, and have given utterance to
their feelings in expressions of unbounded con¬
fidence and joy, in a consciousness of being the
objects of that love.
But lest there should still be some of the
saints of God, whose minds and hearts have
not been reached either by the declaration of
His love to His people, made by prophets and
apostles, or by those which are given in the
Scriptures as coming direct from His own lips,
266 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
let me bring before the view of the still doubting
saint, the still troubled believer, a few of the
utterances, on the part of His trusting and re¬
joicing people, which are recorded in such great
abundance in various parts of God’s holy book.
It cannot be necessary to premise, that wher¬
ever we meet in Scripture with utterances ex¬
pressive of joy and confidence in God, that joy
and that confidence could only have had their
origin in a consciousness of being the objects of
God’s love. The first instance of this rejoicing
and trust in Jehovah, to which we shall advert,
is that contained in the fifteenth chapter of the
Book of Exodus, and which is known as the
Song of Moses. Though the sublime song had
a special reference to the deliverance of the chil¬
dren of Israel from Pharaoh and his hosts, some
of its most beautiful parts are equally applicable
to spiritual deliverances and favours received
from the hand of God,—as, for example, in the
second verse,—“The Lord is my strength and
song, and he is become my salvation: he is my
God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my
father’s God, and I will exalt him.” And again,
in the eleventh verse,—“Who is like unto thee.
OF HIS LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE.
267
0 Lord, among the gods? who is like thee,
glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing
wonders?” How must Moses have joyed and
rejoiced in a sense of God’s goodness as well as
His power, when he could employ the language
which constitutes this song !
But we pass over all the illustrations which
are to be found in the intervening books, in
order that we may single out a few of the re¬
markable expressions of confidence and delight
in God which are so numerous in the Psalms.
In the third, fourth, and fifth verses of the third
Psalm, we hear David thus addressing God,—
“ But thou, 0 Lord, art a shield for me; my
glory, and the lifter up of mine head. I cried
unto the Lord with my voice, and he heard me
out of his holy hill. I laid me down and slept;
I awaked: for the Lord sustained me.” In the
first and second verses of the ninth Psalm, David
thus expresses his trust and his joy in God,—“I
will praise thee, 0 Lord, with my whole heart;
I will shew forth all thy marvellous works. I
will be glad and rejoice in thee : I will sing praise
to thy name, 0 thou most High.” Coming to
the twenty-third Psalm, which has proved ex-
268 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LirS
quisitely sweet to the taste of all God’s people
ever since it was penned, it will be seen that
there is not a word in it which is not expressive
of the unbounded confidence and supreme delight
which the sweet singer of Israel felt in God,—
" The Lord,” he says, “ is my shepherd, I shall
not want. He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the
paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with
me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence
of mine enemies : thou anointest my head with
oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and
mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for
ever.” How deep must have been David’s sense
of the love and goodness of God, when he could
pour out his heart in such utterances as these !
In the twenty-eighth Psalm and sixth and
seventh verses, the man according to God’s own
heart exclaims, in the exuberance of his delight
and confidence in his Maker,—“Blessed be the
OF HIS LOVE FOE HIS PEOPLE. 2G1>
Lord, because lie hath heard the voice of my sup¬
plications. The Lord is my strength and my
shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped:
therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with
my song will I praise him.” And in the thirty-
first Psalm and nineteenth verse, David breaks
out into holy rapture as he meditates on the love
or goodness of God, not only towards him, but to
all the saints,—“Oh,” he says, “how great is thy
goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that
fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them
that trust in thee before the sons of men !” And
then, in the twenty-first verse, he thanks God for
His special goodness towards himself,—“ Blessed
be the Lord; for he hath shewed me his marvel¬
lous kindness/’
Omitting many other intermediate expressions
of David’s love and gratitude to God, and con¬
fidence in Him—which he so strongly felt as the
fruit of a sense of the love of God to his soul—I
would invite especial attention to his utterances
on this point as recorded in the sixty-third Psalm,
and the first to the eighth verses,—“ 0 God, thou
art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul
thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a
270 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
dry and thirsty land, where no water is; to see
thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee
in the sanctuary. Because thy loving-kindness
is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus
will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my
hands in thy name. My soul shall be satisfied
as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall
praise thee with joyful lips; when I remember
thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the
night-watches. Because thou hast been my help,
therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I re¬
joice. My soul folioweth hard after thee: thy
right hand upholdeth me.” See here the fulness
of the psalmist’s appropriating faith,-—“ 0 God,
thou art my God.” All that follows is grounded
on the great fact, that he vividly realised the in¬
timate relationship which subsisted between God
and himself. God’s loving-kindness, as he had
before experienced it, was better to him than
anything on earth—better even than life itself.
In that loving-kindness his soul would continue
to rejoice, as it had been before satisfied with it
as with marrow and fatness. And so overflowing
was his joy in the contemplation of it, that it
would, with its great and gracious Author, be the
OF HIS LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE.
271
subject of liis remembrance and meditations on
his bed, in the watches of the night. Nor would
it suffice that he should silently admire God's
loving-kindness to him, and adore Him in secret
for it, but he would, on that account, audibly and
openly bless the Lord while he had a being. His
praise of God on earth would only cease with his
earthly life, and then he knew that, in the brighter
and better world which would succeed the present,
he would unceasingly, so long as eternity itself
should last, sing God’s praises for His loving¬
kindness, in far higher and nobler strains than
those in which any one ever can sing them in our
present imperfect state of existence.
In the fourth and fifth verses of the eighty-
sixth Psalm, we see again a striking proof of the
clear perception which the man according to Gods
own heart had of God’s great goodness, and of
the joy and confidence which that perception of
his Maker’s character inspired in his mind,—
“ Kejoice the soul of thy servant: for unto thee,
0 Lord, do I lift up my soul Por thou, Lord,
art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in
mercy unto all them that call upon thee.” In
the fifteenth and sixteenth verses of the eighty-
272 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD S OWN LIPS
iii ndh Psalm, we are presented with another proof
of the joy and rejoicing which David experienced
from his contemplations of the loving character
of God,—“Blessed,” he exclaims, “is the people
that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, 0
Lord, in the light of thy countenance. In thy
name shall they rejoice all the day; and in thy
righteousness shall they be exalted.”
But we have dwelt sufficiently long on these
illustrations of David’s confidence and joy in God,
as the result of his consciousness of the Divine
love, which are so freely furnished in his holy
and heavenly songs. In the twelfth chapter of
the book of Isaiah, we have a very remarkable
and very precious prophetic intimation of the joy
and gratitude which the saints of a future period
would feel, arising from a vivid apprehension of
God’s great goodness, and which would be ex¬
pressed as well as felt when the Holy Spirit’s in¬
fluence should be more abundantly poured out on
the minds of men under the gospel dispensation,
—“And in that day,” says the evangelical seer,
“ thou shalt say, 0 Lord, I will praise thee:
though thou wast angry with me, thine anger i3
OF HIS LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE.
273
turned away, and thou comfortedst me. Behold,
God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be
afraid: for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and
my song; he also is become my salvation. There¬
fore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells
of salvation. And in that day shall ye say, Praise
the Lord, call upon his name, declare his doings
among the people, make mention that his name
is exalted. Sing unto the Lord; for he hath done
excellent things: this is known in all the earth.
Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for
,great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of
thee.” And in the first verse of the twenty-fifth
chapter of the book of Isaiah, the evangelical pro¬
phet expresses his own individual confidence and
rejoicing in God,—“0 Lord/’ he says, “thou art
my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name :
for thou hast done wonderful things ; thy counsels
of old are faithfulness and truth.” Recurring
again to what he saw in prophetic vision, Isaiah,
in the ninth verse of the same chapter, says, in
that language of faith’s appropriation to which
reference has so recently been made,—“And it
shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we
s
274 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
have waited for him, and he will save ns: this is
the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be
glad and rejoice in his salvation/’
One more quotation on this point from the
evangelical prophet, is all I shall give, but it is
one of surpassing significance and sweetness.
In the tenth and eleventh verses of the sixty-
first chapter of the book of Isaiah, he thus
breaks forth in lofty strains respecting the joy
and confidence which he said all the saints ex¬
perience in their covenant God and Father,—“ I
will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall
be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me
with the garments of salvation, he hath covered
me with the robe of righteousness, as a bride¬
groom decketh himself with ornaments, and as
a bride adorneth herself with her jewels. For
as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the
gardes causeth the things that are sown in it to
spring forth; so the Lord God will cause right-
eousness and praise to spring forth before all the
nations/’
In the writings of the minor prophets there
are various expressions of the same feeling to¬
ward God on the part of His people. The pro-
OF HIS LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE.
275
phet Micah says, in the seventh chapter and
the seventh and eighth verses,—“ Therefore I will
look unto the Lord; I will wait for the God of
my salvation: my God will hear me. Rejoice
not against me, 0 mine enemy: when I fall, I
shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord
shall be a light unto me.’" And in the eighteenth
verse of the same chapter, we hear him address¬
ing God in these confiding terms,—“Who is a
God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and
passeth by the transgression of the remnant of
his heritage ? he retaineth not his anger for ever,
because he delighteth in mercy.”
Our concluding quotation from the Old Tes¬
tament on this aspect of our subject, is one of
the most expressive and precious to be met with
in any part of the inspired volume,—“ Although
the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit
be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall
fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the
flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there
shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice
in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salva¬
tion. The Lord God is my strength, and he
will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will
276 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
make me to walk upon mine high places.’" How
unutterably great must have been Habakkuk’s
joy and confidence in God when he could truth¬
fully adopt such remarkable language as this!
And what a holy and happy state of mind all
those saints of God must be in, who can appro¬
priate to themselves the sentiments, as well as
the words, of this most precious portion of re¬
vealed truth ! Millions of God’s people have
had their fears dispelled, their sorrows chased
away, and their hearts filled with a joy unspeak¬
able and full of glory, when they have been en¬
abled, by the Holy Spirit, to make the language
of Habakkuk their own. And why, ye saints
of God, whose minds, in His providence, have
been brought into contact with this chapter,—
why should not the words come to your hearts
with the same preciousness and power ?
From the New Testament our quotations
might be numerous, but we shall only give one,
owing to the length to which those from the
Old Testament have extended. The one re¬
markable passage to which we allude will occur
to every Christian mind as confirming, in a
manner the most emphatic, our views respecting
OF HIS LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE. 277
the joy and confidence which the believer, when
his perceptions are unclouded, has of the love
of God in Christ to men,—“For I am persuad¬
ed,” says Paul, “that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor
things present, nor things to come, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able
to separate us from the love of God, which is
in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Language could
hardly give more forcible expression to the
Christian's confidence and rejoicing in God,
springing from a blessed appropriation of His
boundless love in Jesus to ruined man. Nothing
above or below, in heaven or on earth—nothing,
in short, in the universe, can separate God’s
people from His love in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Similar passages are largely scattered throughout
the whole of the writings of the Apostle Paul.
Peter, too, and, indeed, all the apostles, give
utterance to feelings of abounding confidence
and joy in God, arising from the views which
they had formed of His love and goodness, as He
is seen in the Lord Jesus Christ. But we must
content ourselves with a simple recommendation
of these passages to the attentive consideration of
278 DECLARATIONS FROM GOD’S OWN LIPS
those of the people of God who may read these
pages.
If it be true, as a rule, in reference to holy
Scripture, that whatever was written aforetime
was written for our learning; it is no less true,
that we are equally bound to derive benefit from
the examples set us, both with regard to our
feelings and our conduct, by the saints of God,
w T hose experience is recorded in the inspired
volume. If all the saints in Old and New Testa¬
ment times, whose words we have quoted, thus
joyed, and rejoiced, and trusted in God, because
they had a clear and abiding apprehension of His
love towards them, it manifestly becomes our
duty to be, in this respect, faithful followers of
those who have gone before us. Let us all ear¬
nestly pray for, and zealously labour to attain
unto, that realising sense of God’s great love to¬
wards us, which will enable us to repose in Him,
at all times, with the simple, unfaltering confi¬
dence of children. And for our own happiness,
no less than for His glory, let us rejoice in Him
with exceeding joy, amid the ever-varying cir¬
cumstances in which we may be placed in our
OF HIS LOVE FOE HIS PEOPLE. 2?9
pilgrimage through this world. This is alike the
duty and the privilege of the believer; and he
who fails to perform the duty, deprives himself
of pleasures of which none but those who have
enjoyed them can form any conception.
CHAPTER X.
god’s love to his people as shewn in theib
SEASONS OF SOEEOW.
The people of God have a full share of the
troubles and trials of this life. If they have
sources of consolation unknown to those who
are strangers to redeeming grace, so they have
sources of sorrow which are peculiar to them¬
selves. The unconverted enter not into the
kingdom of heaven; the people of God do enter
there, but not until after they have passed
through much tribulation. Their trials spring
from a great variety of causes, and are conse¬
quently diversified as well as numerous. They
relate to the mind as well as to the heart—to the
body as well as to the soul—to things which are
temporal as well as to those which are of a spi¬
ritual nature. Dark providences frequently and
largely beset their pathway to their heavenly
god’s love to his people.
281
home; and when their faith falters, or their
views of the gracious character of God become
dim, either through the agency of Satan or of
inherent corruption in themselves, they are often
deeply cast down and sorely distressed. It is
only by the saints of God, who may be passing
through their deep waters of providential sorrow,
looking back to the exhibition of God’s gracious
character, so abundantly given in His Word, that
comfort can be restored to their souls.
With this view, let us first glance at some of
the many assurances of God’s readiness to rescue
from, or support His people in their seasons of
temporal sorrow, which are to be found in such
rich abundance in His holy Word. In bringing
before the minds of my readers a few of these
passages, it may be well to remark, that it is not
always easy to distinguish between those portions
of Scripture of an assuring character which pri¬
marily relate to providential troubles, and that
distress which partakes of an essentially spiritual
character. Many of the passages to which we
allude refer with almost equal force both to pro¬
vidential and spiritual sorrows. In such cases,
it is for the saints themselves to apply such por-
282 god’s love to his people as shewn
tions of the Word of God to their own peculiar
cases.
The first passage to which I invite attention,
expressive of the tender and watchful care which
God exercises towards His people, in reference
to their worldly wellbeing, will be found in the
fourth chapter of Deuteronomy from the thirty-
second to the thirty-eighth verses,—“ For ask
now of the days that are past, which were before
thee, since the day that God created man upon
the earth; and ask from the one side of heaven
unto the other, whether there hath been any
such thing as this great thing is, or hath been
heard like it ? Did ever people hear the voice of
God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou
hast heard, and live? Or hath God assayed to
go and take him a nation from the midst of an¬
other nation, by temptations, by signs, and by
wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and
by a stretched-out arm, and by great terrors,
according to all that the Lord your God did for
you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto thee it
was shewed, that thou mightest know that the
Lord he is God; there is none else beside him.
Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice,
\
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
283
that he might instruct thee; and upon earth he
shewed thee his great fire; and thou heardest
his words out of the midst of the fire. And
because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose
their seed after them, and brought thee out in
his sight with his mighty power out of Egypt;
to drive out nations from before thee greater and
mightier than thou art, to bring thee in, to give
thee their land for an inheritance, as it is this
day."
Though this passage has a primary reference
to God’s gracious providential dealings with His
ancient people, it is as true at the present day
of every individual saint as it was four thousand
years ago of the children of Israel. Though
there is no absolute certainty, because there is no
absolute promise, that God will bring His people
out of particular troubles, yet, if it be for the
Divine glory and their eternal good, that they
should be brought triumphantly through their
providential sorrows, that deliverance will most
surely be accorded to them. And what more
could or would any of God’s people wish ? All
their own experience, as well as what they see,
and have read of the experience of their fellow-
284 god’s love to his people as shewn
sainis, must have conducted them to the conclu¬
sion, that God does most wonderfully work tem¬
poral deliverances for His people, when those
who are not His people are permitted to be
crushed or greatly paralysed by them.
If ever, humanly speaking, there was a man
ujion earth who might be supposed likely to
arraign the goodness of God because of the
pressure of temporal troubles, that man was
Job. Yet hear what he says of the Divine
providential goodness in the fifth chapter and
from the seventeenth to the twentieth verses,—
“Behold, happy is the man whom God cor¬
rected ; therefore despise not thou the chasten¬
ing of the Almighty: for he maketh sore, and
bindeth up; he woundeth, and his hands make
whole. He shall deliver thee in six troubles;
yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. In
famine he shall redeem thee from death ; and
in war from the power of the sword.” “ Happy
is the man whom God corrected! ” The word
“ happy ” may with greater propriety be trans¬
lated “blessed,” because the saints of God are
always blessed, though not always conscious of
it. “In six troubles, yea, in seven,” God will
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
28 5
deliver His people. He will bring them safely
out of all their distresses. The word seven is
definitely put for an indefinite number.
Most blessed is that exhibition of God's tender
providential affection for His people which the
psalmist gives in the thirty-fourth of his
delightful songs and from the seventeenth to
the nineteenth verses,—“ The righteous cry, and
the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out
of all their troubles. The Lord is nigh unto
them that are of a broken heart; and saveth
such as be of a contrite spirit. Many are the
afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord de¬
livereth him out of them all." And in the
verse which follows, namely, the twentieth, it is
added,—“ He keepeth all his bones : not one of
them is broken."
It would not be easy to imagine a more
precious assurance than the one in the nine¬
teenth verse,—that though the afflictions of the
righteous are many, God delivereth them out of
them all. And no less to be prized is the wonder¬
ful exhibition of tenderness in the assurance, in
the twentieth verse, that God keepeth ail His
people’s bones, so that not one of them is broken.
286 god’s love to his people as shewn
In the third verse of the forty-first Psalm
there is another expression to the same effect,
which is no less remarkable for its sweetness,
—“ The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed
of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in
his sickness.” Pause here, ye people of God,
and seek to enter as fully as it may be given
you by the Divine Spirit to do, into the un¬
utterable blessedness there is in the assurance
thus given of the boundless affection which God
cherishes towards His saints, when His provi¬
dential hand lies heavily upon them; and of
the solicitude which He ever feels that they
should not be overwhelmed by their troubles.
It is necessary for their own sakes, as well as
for His glory, that they should at times be laid
on beds of languishing; but then He makes,
with His own gentle hand, moved by His infi¬
nitely loving heart, the beds of sickness on
which they are stretched. If anything could
convey to the minds of God’s providentially-
tried people, a vivid sense of the amazing ten¬
derness of His love towards them, surely the
marvellous words which have just been quoted
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
287
are the very words which, of all others, are most
adapted for such a purpose.
Coming to the fifty-fifth Psalm and the
twenty-second verse, we have an injunction
from David, who was himself greatly pressed
down by troubles of various kinds, to “ cast our
burdens on the Lord/’ accompanied by a posi¬
tive promise that He will sustain us. And as a
further proof of the saints’ safety in, and their
ultimate deliverance from the troubles that, for
a season, weigh heavily upon them, we are
assured “ that the righteous never shall be
moved.” No matter, believer, what your bur¬
den may be,—cast it upon God, He will receive
it. It is His will you should transfer it from
yourself to Him. Rather, perhaps, I should
say, that He will bear it, agreeably to a passage
already quoted, that in all His people’s afflictions
He is afflicted. Do not mistake the meaning
of this passage. God does not say that He will
remove your burden. There is no absolute pro¬
mise, as has been already observed, to that
effect in the Divine Word, either in reference to
temporal or spiritual pressures. But the pro-
288 GOD’S LOVE TO HIS PEOPLE AS SHEWN
mise is absolute that you shall be strengthened
by God to bear whatever burden He lays upon
you. He “ will sustain thee/' What more
could any child of God ask at his heavenly
Father’s hands? What more could he desire?
God permits the burden to remain, but then
grace is so liberally given to sustain the saint
under it, that in effect it ceases practically to be
a burden at all, in the sense in which the word
is usually understood. Hence we read both in
Scripture and in profane history, and hence we
see in our daily intercourse with God’s people,
that trials which would depress and crush the
men of the world, are cheerfully borne by them.
This is the grand secret of the happiness of the
saints, amidst all their troubles in life, and not
less so when they feel themselves succumbing
to the advances of death. They have cast all
their burdens on the Lord, and the assurance
of faith that He will sustain them waxes stronger
and stronger, because their own past experience
comes opportunely at such a season, in confirma¬
tion of God’s own promise to that effect.
Again passing over a wide interval, we come
to the ninety-first Psalm. That song of praise
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
280
is emphatically devoted to the development of
God's providential goodness towards His people.
The first eleven verses of the psalm set the fact
of God's providential care very strikingly before
us,—“He," says David, “that dwelleth in the
secret place of the most High, shall abide under
the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the
Lord, He is my refuge, and my fortress: my God;
in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee
from the snare of the fowler, and from the
noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his
feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust:
his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou
shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor
for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the
pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the
destruction that wasteth at noon-day. A thou¬
sand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at
thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.
Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see
the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast
made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the
most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil
befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh
thy dwelling. Bor he shall give his angels charge
T
290 god’s love to his people as shewn
over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.” Com¬
ment on this passage is not needed. Every verse,
nay, every word, speaks in language so clear and
so forcible, that none can mistake its meaning.
The book of Isaiah is crowded with passages
which describe, in the most explicit and em¬
phatic language, the tender and unceasing provi¬
dential care which God exercises over His people;
but the more prominent of these will suggest
themselves to the reader’s own mind, and there¬
fore need not be transferred to our pages.
Jeremiah, too, occupies much of his book with
the same tojjic ; and all the minor prophets make
more or less frequent allusions to it. But these
must all be passed over, that reference may be
made to two singularly emphatic passages in the
New Testament, affirmative of the fact of God’s
providential love and care towards His people.
In the Saviour’s Sermon on the Mount, He
most forcibly and beautifully brings out the
blessed truth, that God’s people are ever, even
as regards their temporal interests, under His
special care. How pointedly, and yet how ten¬
derly, does Jesus rebuke those of His disciples
who distrust the providential care of God!
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
291
“Take no thought/' He says, “for your life,
what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor
yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not
the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment ? Behold the fowls of the air : for they
sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into
barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.
Are ye not much better than they ? Which of
you by taking thought can add one cubit unto
his stature? And why take ye thought for
raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how
they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon, in all
his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field,
which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the
oven, shall he not much more clothe you, 0 ye of
little faith ? ”
These are all remarkable words,—words which
could only come from the lips of Him of whom
it was said, “Never man spake like this man."
Yet even more assuring, were that possible, are
the words to which the same Divine speaker gave
utterance, when, as recorded in the twenty-ninth,
thirtieth, and thirty-first verses of the tenth
292 god’s love to his people as shewn
chapter of the Gospel by St Matthew, He says,—•
“ Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? and
one of them shall not fall on the ground without
your Father. But the very hairs of your head
are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are
of more value than many sparrows.”
There must be something surpassingly sweet
to the believer’s taste in these two, out of the
many gracious utterances which came from the
sacred lips of Jesus during His sojourn on earth.
What a marvellous unfolding of God’s care and
condescension, in providence, towards His people
is here furnished to us ! " The very hairs of your
head are all numbered,”—numbered, not by
angels, or by any other superior order of intelli¬
gences, but by God himself. But as I have
before referred to this expression, I will not now
recur to it.
But the heaviest of all sorrows to the saints of
God are the sorrows of the soul. Let us there¬
fore briefly advert to some of those passages in
the holy oracles which have a special reference to
spiritual troubles. These are often of a diver¬
sified kind, even in the experience of the same
saint; and, owing to constitutional and other
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
293
causes, they are different in different Chris¬
tians.
But no matter what may be the cause, or how
many may be the causes, why believers are cast
down,—there are ample means of support and
solace in the Word of God. His love to men
has led Him to make abundant provision for
their support under their troubles, while they
last, and for their ultimate deliverance from
them. Are you, believer, in darkness ? Every¬
where God is spoken of in His Word, and speaks
of Himself, as your sun. His holy oracles, which
are but a transcript of Himself, will be a light
unto your feet, and a lamp unto your path. Be-
in ember the gracious assurance that the path of
the just is as the shining light that shineth more
and more unto the perfect day.
But instead of a mere general reference or two
to passages in which God is spoken of as the
light of His people amidst the scenes of darkness
through which they have to pass, it may prove
consolatory to those saints whose path is thus
enveloped in darkness, to have laid before them
a few passages, with the places in which they are
found, distinctly pointed out,—“ There be many
294 god’s love to his people as shewn
that say/' observes David, in the sixth verse of the
fourth Psalm,—“ Who will shew us any good V*
but that is not what God’s people say. The lan¬
guage is that of the men of the world. The
desire and the prayer of the saints is,—“ Lord, lift
thou up the light of thy countenance upon us.’'
That is the great source of their happiness, even
in their present state of being, just as the efful¬
gent light of the Divine countenance, by which
all darkness will be for ever dispelled, will be the
chief element in the happiness of heaven. In the
first verse of the twenty-seventh Psalm, the man
according to God’s own heart rejoiced with un¬
speakable joy, in being able to proclaim to all
around that the Lord was his “ light and salva¬
tion." That is a gracious assurance to you who
are for a season walking in darkness, which is
given in the eleventh verse of the ninety-seventh
Psalm,—“ Light is sown for the righteous, and
gladness for the upright in heart." Believe the
Word of God, all ye saints who feel yourselves
to be for a time enshrouded in a darkness at
once deep and dense, when it tells you that
what is sown for you, you shall in due time
reap. “ God is the Lord," says David, in the
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
295
twenty-seventh verse of his one hundredth and
eighteenth song of praise,—“ God is the Lord, who
hath shewed us light.’' Those saints who cannot
at present speak in the past tense, will all ere
long be able to employ the language of the
psalmist, and say, “ God is the Lord, who hath
shewed us light.’' In the nineteenth and twen¬
tieth verses of the sixtieth chapter of the book of
Isaiah, there is a remarkably sweet unfolding of
the blessed truth, that God is and will be the
light of those of His people who here below have
their days of darkness. “The sun shall be no
more thy light by day; neither for brightness
shall the moon give light unto thee: but the
Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and
thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go
down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself:
for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and
the days of thy mourning shall be ended.”
It is reserved for the saints who have passed
the portals of glory to realise, in all its fulness
and grace, the preciousness of this passage; but
in a modified sense God s people can all, more
or less largely, set their seals to the fact of its
realisation, even in this world. And when they
290 GOD’S LOVE TO HIS PEOPLE AS SHEWN
do, they enjoy such a consciousness of the love
of God to them even here, as in their seasons of
darkness they could not have believed to be pos¬
sible. God's people, indeed, notwithstanding all
the darkness which at times broods over their
minds, and enshrouds their souls, are regarded as
the children of light, and are so called by Him.
“ Ye are all,” says Paul, in the fifth verse of the
fifth chapter of the Pirst Epistle to the Thessa-
lonians,—“ Ye are all the children of the light and
of the day: we are not of the night, nor of dark¬
ness.” And this is strictly true, even when the
saints are exclaiming, “ How great is that dark¬
ness ! ”—true, as compared with the condition of
the unconverted, who are now surrounded by an
Egyptian darkness, which is but the prelude,
unless God's mercy prevent it, to outer and eter¬
nal darkness in the world to come. You, be¬
liever, as Peter says in his First Epistle, in the
second chapter and ninth verse,—you have been
called out of this darkness into God’s marvel¬
lous light. Bless His holy name for it; and be
assured that, ere long, the clouds of darkness
which may now, at particular seasons, partially
envelop your soul, will all be dispelled for ever.
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW. 297
Even in your darkest moments you may, and
ought, to adopt the language of the prophet
Micah, when, in the eighth and ninth verses of
his last chapter, he breaks out in this confident
language,—“ Rejoice not against me, 0 mine
enemy : when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit
in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.
I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because
I have sinned against him, until he plead my
cause, and execute judgment for me: he will
bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his
righteousness.”
All believers, however frequent and dense may
be their days of darkness, will, sooner or later, in
the greatness of God’s love, find in their blessed
experience, even in this world, that David spoke
for them as well as for himself, when, in the
fifteenth verse of his eighty-ninth Psalm, he says,
—“ Blessed are the people that know the joyful
sound: they shall walk, 0 Lord, in the light of
thy countenance.” The candle of the Lord may
cease for a season to shine upon His people, but
the season will only be a brief one. And when
it shines anew it will be with a greater bright¬
ness and blessedness than before.
298 god’s love to his people as shewn
God is His people’s guide in all the perplex¬
ing paths of life. You may not know where to
turn in particular periods of your life, nor what
course to take. You have but to commit your
ways to God, and He will bring it to pass. He
will guide you by His counsel while here, and
afterwards receive you into glory. The psalmist
rejoiced exceedingly in this view of the character
of God. “ The Lord God,” he says, in a passage
already quoted, “ is a sun and shield.” And in
another place, “ The Lord is the light of my
countenance, and mine own God for ever.” In
his glorious songs of praise the places are so
numerous in which he rejoices in God as the
guide alike of his youth and of his old age, that
it is unnecessary to adduce illustrations of the
fact. The prophets, too, seemed to have emi¬
nently clear and precious perceptions of the char¬
acter of God when viewed in the relation of a
light or guide to His people. “ Who,” says
Isaiah, in the tenth verse of his fiftieth chapter,—
“ Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that
obeyeth the voice of his God, that walketh in
darkness, and hath no light ? let him trust in the
name of the Lord, and stay himself upon his
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
299
God.” It is a most marvellous proof of the love
of God, that He should thus provide for all the
perplexing circumstances in which His people
may be placed in their pathway to glory. It
were easy to fill scores of the pages of this volume
with passages from the Word of God to this
effect.
But not to multiply instances, let me just
bring before the believer who may be in great
perplexity, and has no confidence in his own fit¬
ness to direct his steps, and feels that he needs
alike that light should be poured into his mind,
and that he should have an unerring guide to
direct him,—some of those words on the subject
which come immediately from the mouth of God
himself. What could be more gracious on the
part of God—what could be more comforting to
you who are believers in Jesus, than those words
in the eighth verse of the thirty-second Psalm,—
“ I will instruct thee, and teach thee in the way
which thou shalt go : I will guide thee with
mine eye.” David had the sweet experience of
this comforting conviction when, in the four¬
teenth verse of his forty-eighth Psalm, he said,
“ Por this God is our God for ever and ever: he
800 god’s love to his people as shewn
will be our guide even unto death.” Precious
truth ! He does not guide His people for a time,
and then forsake them. No; He guides them
to the last. He will not forsake them or leave
them to themselves until He has safely conducted
them through the final stage of their journey.
Nor does He leave them even then. He then
receives them to glory, takes them to Himself
that they may be ever with Him in those glorious
regions where His guidance is no longer required,
because at His right hand there is no darkness
nor danger. “And I will,” says God, in the six¬
teenth verse of the forty-second chapter of Isaiah,
“ bring the blind by a way that they knew not;
I will lead them in paths that they have not
known : I will make darkness light before them,
and crooked things straight. These things will
I do unto them, and not forsake them.”
The saints of God are often in a state of mind
which does not come exactly under any of the
categories we have mentioned, but which is to
them one of great unhappiness. Their hearts
are filled with fear. Ask them the reason why,
and it may be that they can give you no par¬
ticular reason for then* apprehensions. Paul
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
301
expressed the feelings of myriads of Christians of
the present day, when he described his own ex¬
perience in these memorable words,—“ Without
were fightings, within were fears.” Your fears
may not be precisely the same as his. They
may have a different origin, they may relate to
different objects; but still the unhappiness they
cause is substantially the same. There is a fear
which all the saints of God ought to have, be¬
cause it is a scriptural and a salutary fear: they
ought ever to be profoundly influenced by filial
fear,—that fear of offending God, which is one
of the great characteristics of every true Chris¬
tian. They ought, too, ever to cherish a fear of
themselves,—a distrust of their own disposition
to, and capacity for, the performance of anything
that is spiritually good. It is in reference to
this fear that the apostle exhorts the saints of
the present day, as he did the Church at Borne,
not to be high-minded, but to fear. But this is
not the kind of fear to which we allude. It is a
doubt or distrust of the grace or the providence
of God,—that sort of fear which David felt when
he said, “ I shall one day perish by the hands of
mine enemies.” God’s people frequently fear
302 god’s love to his people as shewn
that they will not be delivered out of the deep
providential troubles into which they are brought;
and even the best of them have their seasons of
apprehension, that their souls will not be saved
at last. Behold, believer, the tenderness of God’s
love to you in the multiplicity and preciousness
of those parts of His Word, in which, in order
that your doubts may be dispelled, and your
fears scattered to the winds, He speaks by His
own lips, in His own person, words of comfort to
you. As early in the Old Testament dispensa¬
tion as the fifteenth chapter and the first verse
of the book of Genesis, we hear God graciously
saying to His servant Abraham—and what He
then said to him, He now says to all who are His
spiritual seed,—“Fear not, Abraham: I am thy
shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” Can
any one doubt that these words from the lips of
God caused His servant’s fears to vanish ? From
that hour Abraham knew not what fear was.
To Isaac, Abraham’s son, God addressed Himself
on a memorable occasion, in nearly the same
language. In the twenty-fourth verse of the
twenty-sixth chapter of Genesis, we find it thus
written,—“ And the Lord appeared unto him the
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
303
same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham
thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and
will bless thee, and multiply thy seed, for my
servant Abraham’s sake.”
Through the mouth of His servant Moses, God
also addressed His chosen people, in words to the
same effect, when Moses was compelled by ad¬
vanced years to relinquish their leadership, while
they were yet in the wilderness. Speaking of the
hostile nations whom they would have to en¬
counter on their way to the promised land,
Moses, in the sixth verse of the thirty-first
chapter of Deuteronomy, thus expressed himself,
s —“ Be strong, and of a good courage, fear not,
nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he
it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee,
nor forsake thee.” And substantially the same
language was addressed to Joshua in one of the
subsequent verses, when Mx>ses, by God’s com¬
mand, transferred to him the leadership of the
Jews, in order that he might bring them safely
to the land of Canaan,—“ And the Lord, he it is
that doth go before thee; he will be with thee,
he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear
not, neither be dismayed.”
304 god’s love to his people as shewn
It is not necessary we should pause here, not
even parenthetically, to point out to God’s people
that all this was eminently typical of that spiritual
wilderness through which the saints have to pass
on their way to the heavenly Canaan. What a
source of consolation then must it be to them to
know that God no less says to them, than He did
to the children of Israel of old, and to Joshua
their newly appointed leader,—“ Be strong, and of
a good courage, fear not; ” “ Fear not, neither be
dismayed.”
In the prophecies of Isaiah there are numerous
passages exhorting the people of God to bid their
fears begone. One or two must suffice. That is
an assuring passage in the fourth verse of the
thirty-fifth chapter,—“ Say to them that are of a
fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your
God will come with vengeance, even God with a
recompence ; he will come and save you.” Many
a child of God has derived unspeakable comfort
from this portion of the volume of inspiration.
And it may be, that it will prove no less a blessing
to the soul of some fearful saint whose eye is now
glancing over these pages. In the forty-first
chapter we have also various striking passages
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW. 305
intended to dispel the fears of believers. In the
tenth verse God speaks in this wise,— 1 “ Fear thou
not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for
I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I
will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the
right hand of my righteousness/’ That, too, has
proved a spring of comfort to myriads of God’s
timid ones; and it is so plain, so emphatic, so
abounding in tender love on the part of God, that
it could not be otherwise. In the fourteenth
vefse, God says,—“ Fear not, thou worm Jacob,
and ye men of Israel: I will help thee, saith the
Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel/’
To my mind there is an especial interest in this
verse. How many thousands of timid and trem¬
bling saints it may have afforded comfort to, is
one of those things which can only be known in
those regions of infinite and eternal light, into
which all God’s saints will, sooner or later, be in¬
troduced. The reason why the verse has to me a
special attractiveness is this,—that in a season of
great, though happily of but temporary spiritual
*
darkness, and in, too, a dying hour, it comforted
the soul of the late Mr Evans, of John Street
Chapel, Bedford Row, for fifteen years my beloved
u
306 god’s love to his people as shewn
minister, and, without exception, the holiest man
I ever met with. So precious was this passage to
that eminent servant of God, that, when on a
dying bed, and unable to speak or be spoken to,
he caused the words to be inscribed in large
letters and hung on the curtains, in order that
his eyes as well as his soul might feast upon them.
In the first and second verses of the forty-third
chapter there is another illustration of the same
mode of God’s manifesting His love to His saints,
—“ But now thus saith the Lord that created thee,
0 Jacob, and he that formed thee, 0 Israel, Fear
not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee
by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest
through the waters, I will be with thee ; and
through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:
when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt
not be burnt; neither shall the flame kindle
upon thee.” In the very next chapter and in the
first four verses, the same lammao-e in substance
occurs,—“ Yet now hear, 0 Jacob my servant;
and Israel, whom I have chosen: Thus saith the
Lord that made thee, and formed thee from the
womb, which will help thee; Fear not, 0 Jacob
my servant; and thou, Jesurun, whom I have
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
307
chosen. For I will pour water upon him that is
thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will
pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing
upon thine offspring : and they shall spring up as
among the grass, as willows by the water-courses.”
One more quotation is all I will give. The pas¬
sage to which I allude is in the seventh and
eighth verses of the fifty-first chapter of the same
book,—“ Hearken unto me, ye that know right¬
eousness, the people in whose heart is my law;
fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye
afraid of their revilings. For the moth shall eat
them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat
them like wool: but my righteousness shall be
for ever, and my salvation from generation to
generation.”
Other passages to the same effect, from other
- books, both of the old and New Testaments,
I am obliged to omit, because to quote them
would be to extend unduly this part of my sub¬
ject. Besides, I am sure I have given a suffi¬
cient number to assure the timid believer that
his fears are all unfounded, and ought therefore
to be dismissed. With assurances so numerous,
so explicit, so emphatic, you, my Christian
808 god’s love to his people as shewn
readers, who may have hitherto been often, if
not habitually, of fearful hearts, must now feel
that it is no less your duty than your privilege
to bid all your apprehensions and timidity
depart, and, putting on a cheerful courage, to
apply yourself with a hopefulness and vigour
you have never before exhibited, to the prose¬
cution of your journey towards your heavenly
home.
But the spiritual anxieties of believers often
assume another form. The saints of God are
distressed at their convictions of their own
weakness. They feel themselves to be feeble¬
ness itself, while their foes are powerful as well
as numerous. This was one striking feature in
the experience of all the most eminent men of
God with whom we are made acquainted in the
Bible. David in the Old Testament, and Paul
in the New, were remarkable for the frequency
and depth of feeling with which they expressed
their want of spiritual strength. God, in His
infinite love and grace, hath in this respect
made most ample provision for this exigency of
His people. He is essentially all-powerful. His
name is the Almighty. All power belongeth
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
309
unto the Lord. But that would not be enough
for the saint who is cast down by a sense of his
spiritual weakness. Unless he had some assur¬
ance that God’s omnipotence would be made
available for him, he would not derive any con¬
solation from it. But God has graciously pro¬
mised to put forth His almighty power for the
support and security of His saints. He has
engaged to impart all needful strength to the
weakest believer. One very plain assurance of
this is given in the thirty-fifth verse of the
sixty-eighth Psalm,—“The God of Israel is he
that giveth strength and power unto his people.”
And David himself was comforted with this con¬
viction, when, in the first verse of his twenty-
seventh Psalm, he said, “ The Lord is my light
and my salvation; whom shall I fear ? the Lord
is the strength of my life ; of whom shall I be
afraid?” And in the fourteenth verse of the
same Psalm, he exhorts other saints to derive
comfort and courage from the same source.
“Wait on the Lord,” he says; “be of good
courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart:
wait, I say, on the Lord.” In the seventh verse
of the Psalm immediately following, David is
310 god’s love to his people as shewn
again found rejoicing in the fact that God is the
strength of His people,—“ The Lord is my strength
and my shield ; my heart trusted in him, and I
am helped : therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth ;
and with my song will I praise him,” But per¬
haps the most remarkable of all the psalmist’s
expressions of confidence, that the power of God
would be enjoyed by him both for his protection
and support, are those contained in various
verses of the forty-sixth of his devotional pieces,
—“God,” says he, joyfully and thankfully, as
well as confidently, “ God is our refuge and
strength, a very present help in trouble : there¬
fore will not we fear, though the earth be re¬
moved, and though the mountains be carried
into the midst of the sea; though the waters
thereof roar and be troubled, though the moun¬
tains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be
moved: God shall help her, and that right early.
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob
is our refuge.” In the twenty-sixth verse of
his seventy-third Psalm, David says, “My flesh
and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of
my heart, and my portion for ever.” In the
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
311
first verse of his eighty-first song of praise, he
calls on all God’s people to sing aloud unto Him,
on the ground that He was their strength. The
prophecies of Isaiah abound with blessed views
of the character of God as the strength of His
people. There is a most encouraging view of
God’s character in this respect, in the third
and fourth verses of the twenty-sixth chapter,—
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose
mind is stayed on thee ; because he trusteth in
thee. Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for in the
Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.” Very
sweet to many a tried believer under a con¬
sciousness of his own spiritual feebleness, has
been that invitation from God himself to His
saints to trust in His strength, which is given
in the fifth verse of the following chapter,—
“Let him take hold of my strength, that he
may make peace with me; and he shall make
peace with me.” In the third verse of the
thirty-fifth chapter we are told that God will
strengthen the weak hands, and confirm the
feeble knees. And in the very next verse,
already quoted in confirmation of another view
of God’s character, we read,—“Be strong, fear
31 2 GOD S LOVE TO HIS PEOPLE AS SHEWN
not: behold, your God will come with ven¬
geance, even God with a recompence; he will
come and save you.” Equally comforting is the
assurance given from the twenty-ninth to the
thirty-first verses of the fortieth chapter,—“ He
giveth power to the faint; and to them that
have no might he increaseth strength. Even
the youths shall faint and be weary, and the
young men shall utterly fall: but they that
wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they
shall run, and not be weary; and they shall
walk, and not faint.” In the passage in the
tenth verse of the succeeding chapter, lately
quoted for another purpose, we have as explicit
an assurance given to us as it would be possible
for words to convey, that God will furnish all
needful strength to His people in their seasons of
infirmity,—“Bear thou not; for I am with thee:
be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strength¬
en thee ; I will help thee ; yea, I will uphold thee
with the right hand of my righteousness.”
But passing over the intervening chapters of
the remaining books of the Old Testament, and
part of the New also, until we come to the
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
313
writings of St Paul,—it will be found tliat as
none of God’s people, with whose experience, as
saints, we are acquainted, had a deeper sense of
their own weakness than he, so no one had
greater confidence or joy in the conviction, that
God is the strength of all who trust in Him.
Only hear his precious utterances on this point
in the fourth chapter of his Second Epistle to the
Corinthians from the seventh to the sixteenth
verses,—“But we have this treasure in earthen
vessels, that the excellency of the power may be
of God, and not of us. We are troubled on
every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed,
but not in despair ; persecuted, but not forsaken;
cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing
about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus,
that the life also of Jesus might be made mani¬
fest in our body. For we which live are alway
delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the
life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our
mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but
life in you. We having the same spirit of faith,
according as it is written, I believed, and there¬
fore have I spoken; we also believe, and there¬
fore speak ; knowing that he which raised up the
314 god’s love to his people as shewn
Lord Jesus, shall raise up us also by Jesus, and
shall present us with you. For all things are for
your sakes, that the abundant grace might, through
the thanksgiving of many, redound to the glory of
God. For which cause we faint not; but though
our outward man perish, yet the inward man is
renewed day by day/’ It was the fulness of
Paul’s conviction of his own weakness, and of
God’s strength, that led him, in the twelfth chap¬
ter of the same Epistle and the tenth verse, to
give expression to a state of feeling which, to the
men of the world, must appear anomalous. “ I
take pleasure,” he says, “in infirmities, in re-
proaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in dis¬
tresses, for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak,
then am I strong.” See also how fully and
felicitously the blessed truth, that God is the
strength of His people, is brought out in the
nineteenth verse of the first chapter of the Epistle
to the Ephesians,—“ That ye may know what is .
the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward
who believe, according to the working of his
mighty power.” In the sixteenth verse of the
third chapter, there is another emphatic recog¬
nition of the consoling truth, that Christians do
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
3 ] 5
not stand in their own strength, which is synony¬
mous with perfect weakness, but in the strength
of God,—“ That he would grant you, according
to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with
might by his Spirit in the inner man/’ Similar
in substance is the eleventh verse of the first
chapter to the Colossians,—““Strengthened with
all might, according to his glorious power, unto
all patience and long-suffering with joy fulness.”
And Peter, in the fifth verse of the first chapter
of his First Epistle, ascribes the salvation of all
who are finally brought to glory, to the power of
God. “ Who are kept,” he says, “ by the power
of God through faith unto salvation.” It is the
power of God which secures the salvation of the
saint; and the medium through which that power
is made available to the believer, is the grace of
faith. And lastly, not to extend our illustrations
any further, Jude winds up his brief Epistle by
committing all to whom his message was ad¬
dressed, to the power of God. “Now unto him,”
lie says, in the two closing verses, “ that is able to
keep you from falling, and to present you fault¬
less before the presence of his glory with exceed-
ing joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory
316 god’s love to his people as shewn
and majesty, dominion and power, both now and
ever. Amen.”
Surely no Christian can fail to discern in such
abundant provision as God is proved in the pas¬
sages we have quoted, to have made to meet the
exigencies of His saints, arising from their
spiritual weakness,—a remarkable evidence of
the great love wherewith He loves them in
time, as He loved from all eternity. You, be¬
liever, ought always to rejoice in the ample pro¬
vision which your covenant God and Father has
thus made for your great and manifold infir¬
mities. David eminently did this. Hence the
great frequency with which we find him rejoicing
in and addressing God as his strength, and his
sole dependence. “ I will go in the strength of
the Lord.” And you, Christian, have the never-
failing promise to cheer and support you,—“ As
thy day is, so thy strength shall be.”
It remains to notice briefly another class of
spiritual sorrows, arising from a particular source,
for which God in His great love has also made
ample provision. I allude to those which spring
from a consciousness of having grievously de¬
parted from God, or, in other words, become
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
317
backsliders. The saints do all, more or less, at
one period or other of their Christian course,
backslide from God; but in many cases their
acts of backsliding become so great, and to their
own minds partake of so aggravated a character,
when the Holy Spirit reveals to them the num¬
ber and enormity of their departures from God,
that they are overwhelmed with feelings of dis¬
tress which verge on despair. Even for such,
God has graciously made abundant provision.
He brings them back by such manifestations to
their souls of His loving character, and of the
depths of His forgiving heart, as fill their minds
with mingled emotions of amazement, affection,
and gratitude.
Still adopting the chronological order of texts
bearing on the backslidings of God's people, His
willingness that they should return to Him, and
the rich provisions He has made for their restora¬
tion,—let us point attention to a passage in verses
twenty-nine, thirty, and thirty-one of the fourth
chapter of Deuteronomy, from which many a
backsliding saint has derived great comfort,—“ If
from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God,
thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy
318 god's love to his people as shewn
heart, and with all thy soul. When thou art in
tribulation, and all these things are come upon
thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the
Lord thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his
voice; for the Lord thy God is a merciful God;
he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor
forget the covenant of thy fathers, which he sware
unto them."
Though these words were formerly addressed
to God's ancient Israel, they are no less meant
for the spiritual Israel of the present day, and of
all periods under the gospel dispensation. It is
a heart-cheering thought, that it is never too late
to return to God ; but that, however long deferred
that return may be, He will mercifully receive His
backsliding creatures. But because God will, at
the latest moment, gladly welcome the return of
the backslider, let no one on that account delay
his return. That would be presumption of the
most daring and criminal kind. It would be turn¬
ing _ the grace of God into licentiousness. As
Satan suggests to the unconverted, when they
first experience in their minds profound convic¬
tions of sin, that it will be time enough to be
converted by and by. so he also suggests to the
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
319
backslider, wlio bethinks himself of returning to
the gracious Being from whom he has wandered,
that it will do as well to return at some indefinite
time hereafter as now. Let every backslider be
on his guard against that device of his soul’s
subtle enemy. Bemember that every day’s delay
increases the danger of never returning at all.
And not only does delay to return to that God
against whom he has revolted, increase the diffi¬
culty of the return, but every hour’s procrastina¬
tion deepens the dishonour done to God by the
saint’s departure from Him. Let me here, by
way of parenthesis, drop a warning word to back¬
sliders. You, who thus hesitate to return to that
gracious and long-suffering Being, from whom you
have wandered, have great reason to fear whether
you have yet in reality resolved to return at all; and
great ground, let me add, to doubt whether you ever
stood in real covenant relationship to God. There
is no more alarming symptom than for a back¬
slider to hesitate about his immediate return to
God,—none which renders deep searching of heart,
as in the sight of the great Heart-searcher, more
urgently necessary. To God’s people, therefore,
when they have strayed from His paths, as well
320 god’s love to his people as shewn
as to those of the unconverted, who may chance
to glance at these pages, I would earnestly and
emphatically say, “Beware of more convenient
seasons.’" Such seasons seldom come. The ex¬
pectation of them, and the waiting for them, have
contributed more than any other cause, and more,
probably, than all other causes put together, to
crowd with lost souls the regions below.
A remarkable instance of God’s readiness to
receive returning sinners, is given in the third
verse of the seventh chapter of the First Book of
Samuel,—“ And Samuel spake unto all the house
of Israel, saying, If ye do return unto the Lord
with all your hearts, then put away the strange
gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and pre-
par^ your hearts unto the Lord, and serve him
only; and he will deliver you out of the hand of
the Philistines.”
Though in this case, as in the one already
quoted, the principal reference is to God’s ancient
people, in relation to their temporal condition, the
assurance is no less explicit and emphatic of spi¬
ritual deliverance to all who sincerely seek to re¬
nounce their backslidings, and turn again to God
Very similar in spirit, and not dissimilar in words,
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
321
is that other passage in the thirtieth chapter of
the Second Book of Chronicles and the eighth and
ninth verses,—“Now, be ye not stiff-necked, as
yonr fathers were, but yield yourselves nnto the
Lord, and enter into his sanctuary, which he hath
sanctified for ever ; and serve the Lord your God,
that the fierceness of his wrath may turn away
from you. Bor if ye turn again unto the Lord,
your brethren and your children shall find 'com¬
passion before them that lead them captive, so
that they shall come again into this land : for the
Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will
not turn away his face from you, if ye return
unto him.”
Surely such gracious words as those, with this
earnest and powerful appeal to the Israelites of
old to return to God, ought to soften the heart
of every backslider of the present day who hears
them,—“ Bor the Lord your God is gracious and
merciful, and will not turn away his face from
you, if ye return unto him.” And will you not
return to God, ye backslider, if any such there
be, whose eye now rests on these words ? What
more could God say to you, with the view of
bringing you back to Himself ?
x
322 god’s love to his people as shewn
The Book of Psalms contains many attestations
of the willingness of God to receive the return of
His saints; but we must omit all reference to
them, because there are others to which we spe¬
cially wish to call the attention of our readers.
Isaiah abounds with such passages. There is one
of especial preciousness in the twenty-first, twenty-
second, and twenty-third verses of the forty-fourth
chapter. Though God’s people had often griev¬
ously departed from Him, and though they were
in some respects even then at a distance from.
Him, as is evident from the appeal to them to re¬
turn, yet He thus graciously and affectionately
addresses them,—“ Remember these, 0 Jacob and
Israel; for thou art my servant: I have formed
thee; thou art my servant: 0 Israel, thou shalt
not be forgotten of me. I have blotted out, as a
thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud,
thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed
thee. Sing, 0 ye heavens; for the Lord hath
done it: shout, ye lower parts of the earth ; break
forth into singing, ye mountains, 0 forest, and
every tree therein: for the Lord hath redeemed
Jacob, and glorified himself in Israel.” But, as¬
suring as these verses are, there is a much more
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
323
direct appeal to backsliders to return to God in
the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth verses of
the third chapter of Jeremiah,—“Go and pro¬
claim these words towards the north, and say,
Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord,
and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you :
for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not
keep anger for ever. Only acknowledge thine
iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the
Lord thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the
strangers under every green tree, and ye have not
obeyed my voice, saith the Lord. Turn, 0 back¬
sliding children, saith the Lord; for I am married
unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and
two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion/'
There is a world of gospel truth, of gospel love,
and of gospel mercy here. Not only is the in¬
vitation given to return to God from whom they
had departed, but the assurance of His merciful
character is given in the most emphatic manner.
And as if one assurance of God's merciful dis¬
position were not enough, it is repeated in the
same energetic terms. Then observe that all that
is required of God’s backsliding people is, that
they should acknowledge their iniquity in having
324 god’s love to his people as shewn
transgressed against Him, and not obeying His
voice. But, most marvellous and gracious of all,
—listen to the unfolding of God’s infinite conde¬
scension and love which is given in the words,
“ For I am married unto you.” That God should
be married to any of His creatures, however ex¬
alted, and even though perfectly innocent, were
truly wonderful! But that He should be married
to the descendants of fallen Adam, is indeed in¬
conceivably amazing ! But the climax of astonish¬
ment has not yet been reached. It is to come.
God married to His people, even when in a state
of backsliding from Him ! That is indeed a
matter for such astonishment, that the more one
tries to sound its depths, the more one finds them
to be unfathomable. The next thing calculated
to fill our minds with surpassing wonder is, that
any backslider, after receiving so express and em¬
phatic an assurance from God, that He is married
even to backsliders, could hesitate one instant in
returning to Him. The appeal which God thus
made to His backsliding people of old was suc¬
cessful. It met with a ready response; for we
find in the twenty-second verse of the same chap¬
ter, in response to the appeal as there repeated,
IN THEIE SEASONS OF SORROW.
325
coupled with, an assurance that He would heal
their backslidings,—“ Behold, we come unto thee ;
for thou art the Lord our God.” Will you not,
my backsliding reader, do the same? Will you
not take with you the same words, and return to
your Maker and Monarch ? Will you not say,
“ Behold, I come unto thee ; for thou art the Lord
my God.”
In the seventh, eighth, and ninth verses of the
thirty-third chapter of the same book, there is a
touching reference to God’s readiness to bring
His backsliding Israel back to Himself, and then
to bestow abundant blessings on them; and
though the words primarily relate to the Jews
in their national capacity, and to their temporal
condition, they are no less applicable to all God's
people now, with respect to their spiritual ex¬
perience. “I will,” says God, “cause the cap¬
tivity of Judah, and the captivity of Israel, to
return, and will build them, as at the first.
And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity,
whereby they have sinned against me; and I
will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they
have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed
against me. And it shall be to me a name of
326 god’s love to his people as shewn
joy, a praise and an honour before all the nations
of the earth, which shall hear all the good that I
do unto them: and they shall fear and tremble
for all the goodness, and for all the prosperity,
that I procure unto it.”
Brief as is the Book of Hosea, it is rich in
assurances of God’s willingness to receive the
returning backslider. What could be more ten¬
der, what could be more calculated to touch the
hearts of those who have wandered from God,
than the way in which He himself speaks
directly to His ancient people, who had so
grievously backslidden from Him ? “ How,” God
says, in the eighth, ninth, and tenth verses of
the eleventh chapter,—“ How shall I give thee up,
Ephraim ? how shall I deliver thee, Israel ? how
shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set
thee as Zeboim ? Mine heart is turned within
me, my repentings are kindled together. I will
not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will
not return to destroy Ephraim : for I am God,
and not man; the Holy One in the midst of
thee: and I will not enter into the city. They
shall walk after the Lord; he shall roar like a
lion : when he shall roar, then the children shall
IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW. 327
tremble from the west.” In the first four verses
of the fourteenth chapter, we have a gracious
exhibition of God’s forbearance towards His
backsliding people, and His readiness to wel¬
come them back to Himself. “0 Israel,” he
says, “ return unto the Lord thy God; for thou
hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you
words, and turn to the Lord: say unto him,
Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously:
so will we render the calves of our lips. Asshur
shall not save us ; we will not ride upon horses ;
neither will we say any more to the work of our
hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee the father¬
less findeth mercy. I will heal their backsliding,
I will love them freely : for mine anger is turned
away from him.”
A number of passages similar in substance to
this, might be given from various other books,
but that would be to multiply quotations to an
undue extent. What more, to use with all re¬
verence God's own most gracious words, could
He have said, or what more could He have done,
than He has said and done to bring back His
wandering people? Let me fondly hope, as well
as fervently pray, that what I have here endea-
328 god’s love to his people.
voured to bring before God’s backsliding saints,
relative to His love, His long-suffering, and His
willingness to receive them back again to His
bosom, will be blessed effectually for that pur¬
pose, to many a poor truant soul. And let me
no less fondly hope, that what I have said re¬
specting those other provisions which God has so
graciously and abundantly made for the comfort
of His people in all the diversified circumstances
of sorrow in which they may be placed, may be
eminently and eternally blessed to their souls.
Let me also with equal earnestness express the
hope, that what has been advanced in various
parts of this chapter, has fully satisfied all who
have read these pages, that in all God’s provi¬
dential and spiritual dealings with His saints, He
shews that His name and His nature is Love.
CHAPTER XL
FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE TO HIS
SAINTS IN THEIR SEASONS OF SORROW.
In the previous chapter I have gone much further
than I at first intended in the specification of
the sorrows which so often spring up in the
believer s soul, as well as in my enumeration of
the troubles which chiefly relate to his physical
condition. Let me, therefore, in my remaining
observations on the subject, generalise what I
shall say, as much as is practicable. Be a be¬
liever’s troubles or trials what they may, he is
apt to regard them as so many proofs that he is
not the object of God’s favour. He feels with
the Psalmist, when he was enveloped in clo.uds
of temporary darkness, that God has forgotten
to be gracious. Not only is the conclusion with¬
out foundation, but visitations of an afflictive
character, so far from being indications that God
330 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
has ceased to regard His saints with the same
favour as before, are tokens of His special
Fatherly regard. It is just because God loves
His people with tender affection that He lays
His hand upon them. Affliction is a necessary
part of their inheritance. It is the most impor¬
tant ingredient in that which is their portion.
You cannot have forgotten the words of Paul in
his Epistle to the Hebrews, the twelfth chapter
and eighth verse, where he says,—“ If ye be with¬
out chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then
are ye bastards, and not sons/’ The son is the
heir ; he inherits his father’s substance ; and the
only real proof of ownership or heirship, is that
of being tried and troubled in your journey to
the possession of the glorious portion which is
provided for you in heaven. If, indeed, there
ever were a time when the saint had seeming
reason—real reason there never can be—to doubt
the love of God to him, that season would be
when all goes smoothly with him, when he is a
stranger to sorrows of the soul, and when the
pathway of Providence is pre-eminently soft to
the feet, and grateful to the senses, because of
the beautiful and fragrant flowers by which it
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 331
is strewed on either side. Then, if ever, would
be the time to ask the question, whether God
hath not forgotten to be gracious? When He
chastises His people, it is not for His own plea¬
sure, but for their profit. Everywhere this is
impressively brought out in the Bible. “He
doth not,” we are expressly told in the Lamen¬
tations, the third chapter and thirty-third verse,
“willingly afflict the children of men.” It is as
a father that He visits His people with the rod;
and we all know what a fulness of affection to-
•
wards his own offspring there is in a father’s
heart. It is, indeed, because He loves them so
well, because He feels towards them so tender an
affection, that He visits them with stripes. But
in His heaviest strokes there is not a particle of
displeasure—not a drop of wrath—in the cup of
sorrow which the believer has to drink. That
cup is the fruit of a Father’s affection: it is all
meant for purposes of correction.
On this subject there is a most glorious ex¬
plicitness and fulness in both divisions of the
inspired volume. Though the Fatherly character
of God was but comparatively little realised or
even discerned in the Old Testament dispensa-
332 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER^ LOVE
tion, but was reserved in all its gracious fulness
for the gospel,—yet in some of the earlier books
of the Bible we have the great truth brought out
in a way which none should have failed to per¬
ceive. “ As a man," or a father, says Moses, in
the fifth verse of the eighth chapter of the book
of Deuteronomy, formerly quoted, “ chasteneth
his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee."
An affectionate father—and such only is here
meant—never inflicts pain in any form on the
child he loves, without great reluctance. It
causes his heart a pang to visit his son with the
rod. He can only bring himself to do it, because
he feels and knows that it is necessary to the
welfare of his offspring that it should be done.
It is because he loves his son that he applies the
rod to him. And his affection prevents the in¬
fliction of a greater amount of punishment than
the occasion requires. Timely correction pre¬
vents the ruin of the child, and therefore the
parental hand applies the rod. It is the same
with God. He visits His people with troubles
and trials in every variety of form, that He may
prevent their rushing recklessly on their eternal
ruin. Job, in the fifth chapter and seventeenth
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 333
and eighteenth verses of his book, is very explicit
to the same effect. “ Happy/' says he, “ is the
man whom God correcteth; therefore despise
not thou the chastening of the Almighty : for
he maketh sore, and bindeth up; he woundeth,
and his hands make whole.” And of all the
saints with whose names we are made acquainted
in the Old Testament, there is none speaks more
with the voice of authority on this subject than
Job, for never did man before or since his time,
so far as we know, experience more heavily or
continuously the afflicting hand of God. David,
too, comes forward in many of his precious
Psalms to bear his testimony, from his own per¬
sonal experience, to the great truth, that to be
afflicted is a proof of the Divine affection, and the
most blessed thing which can befall a believer.
“ Blessed,” he says, in the ninety-fourth Psalm
and the twelfth verse, “ is the man whom thou
chastenest, 0 Lord.” Other proofs of what
David felt on this subject will be given, when I
come to speak of the personal experience of God’s
people in reference to the deep providential
waters through which they are so often called to
pass. Solomon also sets his seal to the blessed-
334 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
\ «
ness of receiving fatherly correction from the
hand of God. He says, in the twelfth verse of
the third chapter of his Proverbs,—“ Whom the
Lord loveth he correcteth, even as a father the son
in whom he delighteth.” The same idea is further
illustrated in language the most expressive, in the
twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
beginning at the sixth and ending with the
eleventh verse,—“ Whom the Lord loveth/’ says
Paul, “ he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son
whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening,
God dealeth with you as with sons: for what
son is he whom the father chasteneth not ? But
if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are
partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
Eurthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh
which corrected us, and we gave them reverence:
shall we not much rather be in subjection unto
the Bather of spirits, and live ? For they verily
for a few days chastened us after their own plea¬
sure ; but he for our profit, that we might be
partakers of his holiness. Now, no chastening for
the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous:
nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 335
fruit of righteousness unto them which are exer¬
cised thereby.”
But of all the portions of God’s holy Word,
in which His people are assured of His love to
them in their seasons of sorrow, there is perhaps
none which more forcibly or more fully sets
forth that fact than the ninth verse of the sixty-
third chapter of Isaiah. “ In all their afflic¬
tions,” says the prophet, “he was afflicted, and
the angel of his presence saved them : in his
love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he
bare them, and carried them all the days of
old.” What marvellous love ! Who shall fully
sound its depths ? No one. They are unfathom¬
able. There is something which oppresses the
mind in its attempts to grasp the great fact,
that God should, in a sense, be afflicted in all
the afflictions of His saints. What a rich source
of consolation, what an inexhaustible fountain
of joy and support, ought this idea to afford to
the suffering saints of God! He could not give
a greater proof of the tenderness of the love
which He bears to His people than is done in the
verse in question.
336 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
Paul, in the eleventh chapter of the first
Epistle to the Corinthians, and the thirty-
second verse, expresses the truth on which we
are dwelling, when he says,—“ But when we are
judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we
should not be condemned with the world.”
And the same idea is beautifully brought out
in the sixteenth and seventeenth verses of the
fourth chapter in his second Epistle to the saints
at Corinth,—“ For which cause we faint not;
but though our outward man perish, yet the
inward man is renewed day by day. For our
light affliction, which is but for a moment, work-
eth for us a far more exceeding and eternal
weight of glory/’ And, last of all, as bearing
on this aspect of our subject, there is that most
precious declaration in the third chapter of Be-
velation and ninteenth verse,—“As many as I
love, I rebuke and chasten.” To be chastened
by God is to His people a conclusive proof of the
affection which He bears to them. What saint,
then, would be without chastisement from his
heavenly Father’s hand ? He who is not rebuked
and chastened by God, has great grounds to fear
lest he should not be a child of God.
/
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 337
At this part of our present chapter a few
general observations, by way of parenthesis, may
bemseful. When the Christian is in deep distress
he especially requires, not only the rich consola¬
tions of the gospel to sustain him under his trials,
but stands in imminent need of the guidance of
God’s Holy Spirit, that he may not act in a
manner at variance with the Divine will. The
afflicted believer is in danger of falling into two
errors. He may either be sinfully impatient
under his troubles, and consequently unduly
anxious to be delivered from them, or he may
seek their continuance. The latter, it is true,
is a very rare circumstance, in the experience of
believers, but still it has occurred, as will be
hereafter shewn. The former state of feeling is
very common. It is almost universal. The
saints of God, even when they are eminent for
their spirituality of mind and the holiness of
their conversation, are all more or less frequently
conscious of impatience under their trials, and of
an undue earnestness in their prayers for deliver¬
ance from them. Now, this is not in consonance
with the will or the Word of God. There is no
authority in Scripture for absolute or uncondi-
Y
338 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOYE
tional prayer for deliverance from trials. Yon
have God’s permission to pray for deliverance
from sorrows, but it must be in subordination to
His good pleasure. You are to qualify your
petitions by the words, and by the feelings which
those words express,—“ If it be agreeable to Thy
will, 0 God.” The memorable prayer of our
Lord in the garden of Gethsemane ought to be
regarded by all believers as the model in this
respect. “Father,” He said, “if it be possible,”
—if it be consistent with thy good pleasure,—
“ let this cup pass from me ; nevertheless, not
my will, but thine, be done.”
But though the Christian has thus no authority
for praying absolutely for deliverance from his
troubles, he has the warrant of the Divine Word
for praying, without any condition or qualification
whatever, for God’s gracious support under his
trials, and for the deep sanctification of them. It
is, indeed, especially for the latter purpose that
God visits His people with afflictions; and when
their minds are fully enlightened by the Holy
Spirit, and their hearts are rightly exercised by
Divine grace, they will pray for resignation under
the correcting hand of their heavenly Father, and
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 339
for the sanctified use of all the afflictions which
He sees fit to send them. Let me entreat you;
therefore, Christian reader, to lay this considera¬
tion deeply to heart, in your seasons of sorrow,—
that were God to hear your prayers for uncondi¬
tional deliverance from your troubles, prompted
by a spirit of impatience and fretfulness, it would
be the greatest calamity which could befall you.
He never gives, and never can give, a greater proof
of the exquisite tenderness of His love towards
His people, than in not answering those prayers,
which, in their ignorance and sinful restiveness
under His afflicting hand, they often offer up to
Him. I do not know whether it ever has occurred
to others, but it has often occurred to my own
mind,—that it is a matter which admits of doubt,
whether God does not often as signally display
the greatness of His love for His people in not
hearing their prayers, as by listening to them,
and granting what they ask,—in what He with¬
holds from them, as in what He bestows upon
them. There is not a man of deep Christian
experience who cannot look back on periods of
his life in which, had God granted him the desires
of his heart, the result would have been his ruin.
340 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
What a mercy to know this, and what a manifes¬
tation of the Divine love is furnished in God’s
withholding ofttimes from us the very things
on which we had most intently set our hearts !
May the thought teach every believer in Christ
what abundant cause he has to be grateful to God,
that he is not, in this respect, in his own hands,
but in the hands of his infinitely wise and
infinitely loving Father in heaven.
But I have said that, while the great sin of
the vast majority of believers is to be impatient,
and even to give expression to murmuring
thoughts, because of God’s providential deal¬
ings with them, there are some Christians who
have derived so much and such sensible benefit
from their afflictions, as to pray that God would
visit them with further afflictions. John Bun-
yan sometimes prayed that new afflictions might
be sent to him, in order that he might become
increasingly humble, and be more effectually
weaned from the world. This was wrong on the
part of Bunyan, as it would be on the part of
any Christian of the present day. There is no
authority, nor the shadow of authority, for such a
prayer in the inspired volume. It is a practical
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 341
arraignment of the Divine wisdom and goodness.
God is intelligent enough—for He is omniscient,
to know what amount of affliction is needful for
us, and He will give us just that amount and no
more. And as He does not put one drop more
than is absolutely necessary into our cup of sor¬
row, so the same love which prompted Him to
withhold His hand when He had done all that
was needed, will prevent His withholding from
us any one additional trouble which we may
require, or restrain Him from giving increased
power to those afflictions which we are already
enduring. Our duty in such a case is simply
to lie passive, with childlike simplicity, in the
hands of God, assured that, if we are His, He
will do for us whatever will prove in the end
most conducive to our good, and most strikingly
exemplify the great love wherewith He hath loved
us. Great grace is needful for this; but God is
infinitely gracious, and will, in answer to believ¬
ing prayer, impart to us all the grace which the
occasion may require.
But God no less displays His love to His
people in their times of trouble, by the support
which He vouchsafes to them, and the assurance
342 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOYE
He gives them, that they will be ultimately de¬
livered out of the deep waters through which He
causes them for a season to pass. With regard
to the strength which God imparts to His people
to bear up under their troubles, and the comfort
which He administers to them, Job, in the seven¬
teenth and eighteenth verses of the fifth chapter
of his book, makes use of remarkable words
expressive of his views on the subject. These
we have already quoted, and will have occasion
to quote them in another part of this chapter.
The passage shews, that if God lays one hand
heavily on His saints, He graciously supports
them with the other. The Psalmist gives forcible
and explicit expression to this truth in the ninth
verse of his ninth Psalm, when he says,—“The
Lord will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge
in times of trouble.” David had a sweet con¬
sciousness of the gracious upholding presence of
God in all his sorrows, when he said, in the fifth
verse of his twenty-seventh Psalm,—“ In the time
of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in
the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he
shall set me on a rock.” The words admit of two
constructions,—either God will avert from His
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 343
saints the troubles which befall others, or, if they
are overtaken with calamities of any kind or in
any form, national or individual, they will find
in their heavenly Father protection and strength,
until the calamities be overpast. The same soul-
comforting truth is brought out in the seventh
verse of the thirty-fourth of his songs,—the
sweetest by far that ever greeted the ear of
mortal man,—songs, moreover, whose melodious
notes cause inexpressible delight, as they break
on the ears of the seraphim and cherubim in
heaven. “ The angel of the Lord encompasseth
round about those that fear him, and delivereth
them/’ If God’s angels do not prevent the
trouble, they will minister comfort and impart
strength under its pressure. Very precious to
many afflicted saints of God have been those two
other short sentences of the Psalmist, previously
quoted, wherein he says that God keejieth all His
people’s bones, so that not one of them shall be
broken; and that He maketh all their beds in
their sickness.
Hear, also, from the lips of the man according
to God’s own heart, another emphatic utterance
on the same subject. It is presented to us, first.
344 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
in tlie form of an injunction, and then in the shape
of a promise,—“ Cast thy burden on the Lord.”
Blessed injunction ! “And he shall sustain thee.”
Precious promise! But as if the promise were
not sufficient, or rather with the view of giving it
greater strength, it is added,—“ For he shall never
suffer the righteous to be moved.” The words of
the Apostle are remarkably similar in substance,
nor is there much diversity between the two verses
in the phraseology,—“ Cast all your cares on God,
for he careth for you.” David gives a very express
and very emphatic assurance of the presence and
power of God amidst all the troubles of His people,
when he says, in the fourteenth verse of his hun¬
dred and forty-fifth Psalm,—“ The Lord upholdeth
all that fall, and raiseth up all that are bowed
down.” To the same effect is the declaration of
David in the third verse of the hundred and forty-
seventh Psalm, so recently quoted,—“ He healeth
the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”
In all the books of the prophets, from Isaiah
to Malachi, there are more or less frequent in¬
timations of the affection which God feels for
His people in their sorrows, and of the support
which He is ever ready to render them in their
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 345
days of distress. A few only can be given. Hear
the words which, through the mouth of the evan¬
gelical prophet, he addressed to Jerusalem of old,
in her seasons of sorrow,—“ Comfort ye, comfort
ye my people, saith your God/' is the language of
Isaiah, in his fortieth chapter and the first verse.
“ Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem/' he says in
the second verse, “and cry unto her, that her
warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is
pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord's
hand double for all her sins." And in the twenty-
ninth verse of the same chapter, the prophet tells
us that “ He giveth power to the faint; and to
them that have no might he increaseth strength."
In the following chapter, in the tenth verse, a
verse quoted for another purpose in a previous
chapter, God addressing His people, says,—“Fear
thou not; for I am with thee : be not dismayed ;
for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea,
I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the
right hand of my righteousness."
And in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth,
and twentieth verses of the same chapter, there
is a full unfolding of the same sympathy which
God feels in the afflictions of His saints, and of
346 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
the support and solace which He affords to them,
in their seasons of emergency. “When,” Isaiah
says, “ the poor and needy seek water, and there
is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the
Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not
forsake them. I will open rivers in high places,
and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will
make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry
land springs of water. I will plant in the wilder¬
ness the cedar, the shittah-tree, and the myrtle,
and the oil-tree; I will set in the desert the fir-
tree, and the pine, and the box-tree together;
that they may see, and know, and consider, and
understand together, that the hand of the Lord
hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath
created it.”
One more quotation from the evangelical pro¬
phet is all I shall give in illustration of the truth,
that God is ever present with His people in their
afflictions, to solace and support them. Thou¬
sands of believers have felt, in their soul’s sweet
experience, the blessedness of the promise, so
beautifully amplified. “When,” says God, in
the second and third verses of the forty-third
chapter, “thou passest through the waters, I
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 347
will be with thee; and through the rivers, they
shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest
through the fire, thou shalt not be burned;
neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For
I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel,
thy Saviour/'’
In the ninth verse of the thirteenth chapter of
Zechariah, God makes very plain to His people
the merciful purposes for which He visits them
with affliction, but He no less explicitly assures
them that He will hear their prayers for the
needful strength and comfort under them, and
then for deliverance from them. “I will,” He
says, “ bring the third part through the fire,
and will refine them as silver is refined, and will
try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my
name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is
my people; and they shall say, The Lord is my
God.”
In the New Testament, especially in the
Epistles, the same truth receives repeated confir¬
mation and striking illustration. Paul, in the
third verse of the fifth chapter to the Komans,
could say not only for himself, but for all his
fellow-saints, that they gloried in tribulations.
348 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
And wliy % Because they felt and had found in
their sweet experience that God had abundantly
strengthened them, and accomplished purposes
of the greatest mercy by their trials ; for he
adds, that they knew that tribulation wrought pa¬
tience ; and patience, experience ; and experience,
hope: a hope that did not make ashamed; because
the love of God was shed abroad in their hearts
by the Holy Ghost, which was given unto them.
Paul saw with a remarkable clearness of spiritual
vision what it has, all through this part of my
subject, been my earnest endeavour to impress
on the minds of believers,—that God does espe¬
cially and emphatically display the greatness of
His love to His people, when they are in the fur¬
nace of affliction.
There is another delightful passage from, the
Apostle of the Gentiles, very similar in purport
to that which has just been quoted, in the second,
third, fourth, and fifth verses of the first chap¬
ter of his second Epistle to the Corinthians,—
“ Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Fa¬
ther, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed
be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 349
all comfort; wlio comforteth ns in all our tribu¬
lation, that we may be able to comfort them
which are in any trouble, by the comfort where¬
with we ourselves are comforted of God. Tor
as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our
consolation also aboundeth by Christ/'
As the sufferings of the saints abound, their
consolations not only correspondingly abound,
but even superabound; in other words, the con¬
solation far transcends the sorrow, as great mul¬
titudes of God’s people have found in their
blessed experience. Not less explicit with regard
to the support which God gives, and the comfort
He ministers to His people in their days of deep
distress, is that other passage of the same Apostle,
in the same Epistle, which will be found in the
seventeenth and eighteenth verses of the fourth
chapter,—“For/’ says he, “our light affliction,
which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;
while we look not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen: for the
things which are seen are temporal; but the
things which are not seen are eternal.”
In further portions of the Divine Word, which
350 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
conduct to the same conclusion, I shall have
occasion to refer when I come to speak of the
acknowledgments of the support and comfort
from on high, which so many of God’s saints
have made, as having been experienced by them
in particular periods of their lives, when, to
their own apprehension, as well as in the eyes of
others, all God’s waves and billows were going
over them.
In the meantime, let me briefly allude to the
exhibition of God’s love made to His saints in
their seasons of sorrow, by the assurance which
is given them in His Word, that they will ulti¬
mately be delivered out of all their troubles.
But a word or two in addition to what has been
said, in a previous part of this chapter, by way
of explanation, is necessary first. Some of God’s
promises of deliverance to His people are under¬
stood by them as if those promises were made in
absolute terms, and as if they constituted an
assurance of certain and immediate deliverance
from every trouble. This is, as we before in
effect observed, to mistake the meaning of God’s
Word. The Divine promise is absolute as
regards the ultimate deliverance of the saints
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 351
from their sorrows. As surely as their God and
Father exists, so surely will they in the end
emerge from the waters of affliction into which
they have been plunged. This final and com¬
plete deliverance, however, will not be accom¬
plished in their blessed experience until they
have been translated from earth to heaven.
But there is another sense in which God’s pro¬
mises to deliver His people from all their troubles
are to be understood. I allude to the fact that,
either they are so abundantly strengthened and
comforted in their afflictions, by the bestowment
of grace from God, as to divest their providential
dispensations of that which makes them most
grievous and unbearable to others; or, their
prayers are heard for deliverance ; whereas those
who never resort to the throne of grace are suf¬
fered to lie longer under their heavy burdens.
With this preliminary word of explanation, let
me now, for the comfort of God’s saints, glance
for a moment or two at a few of those portions
of Scripture in which the Divine love is displayed
by promises of deliverance from trouble. No
man ever knew so largely what troubles are as
the patriarch Job, and yet he said that in six
352 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER S LOVE
troubles, yea, in seven—that is, in all troubles—
God would deliver His saints. The Psalmist, in
the thirty-fourth of his songs of praise and the
seventeenth verse, speaks in magnified terms of
the deliverance which God maketh for His saints,
—“The righteous,” he remarks, “cry, and the
Lord delivereth them out of all their troubles.”
And in the next verse but one, the man according
to God’s own heart says,—“ Many are the afflic¬
tions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth
him out of them all.” “ God is my refuge and
strength, a very present help in time of trouble,”
says David, in the first verse of the forty-sixth
Psalm. In the fiftieth Psalm and the fifteenth
verse, God graciously says to all His afflicted
ones,—“ Call upon me in the day of trouble; I
will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.”
Very similar in substance, and not unlike in the
language, is the gracious assurance which God
gives His saints in their times of trouble, in the
fifteenth and sixteenth verses of the ninety-first
of David’s songs,—“ He shall call upon me, and I
will answer him : I will be with him in trouble ; I
will deliver him, and honour him. With long life
will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.”
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 353
Then there is a beautiful passage in the first
four verses of the hundred and third Psalm,—
“ Bless the Lord, 0 my soul; and all that is
within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord,
0 my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who
forgiveth all thine iniquities ; who healeth all thy
diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruc¬
tion ; who crowneth thee with loving-kindness
and tender mercies/’
But the most remarkable illustration given by
the man according to God’s own heart, of our
heavenly Father’s presence in times of trouble,
and of a Divine deliverance of the saints from
their sorrows, is to be found in the hundred and
seventh of his Psalms. That is one of the longest
of his songs of praise, and the theme which per¬
vades it, in a manner more or less marked through¬
out, is the deliverance which God works for His
people. On no fewer than four occasions in that
beautiful Psalm does he employ the words,—“ Then
they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he
delivered them out of their distresses.” And so
overpowered was he with a sense of what the
saints owe to God for His gracious deliverances
in the day of trouble, that again and again he
3.54 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
exclaims, with an emphasis which, after the lapse
of four thousand years, seems to have lost none of
its strength, “Oh that men would praise the
Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful
works to the children of men! ” And, addressing
God in the seventh verse of the hundred and
thirty-eighth Psalm, he says,—“ Though I walk
in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me:
thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the
wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall
save me.”
But I must not further extend my quotations
from the Old Testament, and a very few from the
New must suffice. The thirteenth verse of the
tenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corin¬
thians is full of consolation to the saints, as ex¬
pressly assuring them that from every temptation
in trouble a way of escape will be provided for
them,—“There hath no temptation,” says Paul,
“ happened to you but such as is common to man :
but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be
tempted above that ye are able; but will with
the temptation also make a way to escape, that
ye may be able to bear it.” No less profoundly
was Paul impressed with the conviction that God
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 355
would deliver him out of all his troubles, when,
in the eighteenth verse of the fourth chapter of
his second Epistle to Timothy, he says,—“And
the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work,
and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom :
to whom be glory for ever and ever.”
Other passages to the same effect might have
been quoted, but these will suffice. Is there not,
then, a clear and conclusive proof to be found of
the fact, that God displays His love to His people,
in and by their afflictions, when He strengthens
them to bear them, comforts them in them, and
sooner or later brings them triumphantly out of
them ?
But this most precious truth may be more
deeply and permanently impressed on the minds
of some of God’s people, if we bring before them
a few of those manifold assurances with which
the Bible abounds, that the sorrows and suffer¬
ings of God’s saints will be succeeded by joys
and bliss which will more than compensate for
the afflictions with which God has seen meet to
visit them. God says, in some sense, if not
always in the same sense as He did to Hezekiah,
as recorded in the fifth verse of the twentieth
356 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
chapter of the second book of Kings,—“ I have
seen thy tears, I have heard thy prayers : behold,
I will heal thee.” What an abundant source of
consolation there ought to be in this, to God’s
sorrowing saints! He sees their tears. The tears
of contrition and of affection are precious in
God’s sight, and powerful with Him in prayer.
Those who know not God can have no sympathy
with the spiritual sorrows of His people, and
cannot enter into their spiritual circumstances.
The world looks with pity and contempt on the
tears of the saints, and regards those who shed
them as poor unhappy fanatics. But God’s
estimate is very different. He sees their tears—
in other words, is affected by them. So precious,
indeed, are they in His esteem, that He puts
them into His bottle, in order that they may not
be lost, nor be ever out of His sight. How for¬
cibly does the Psalmist’s idea of God putting the
tears of His sorrowing saints into His bottle,
bring before the mind the tenderness of the
Divine affection, when believers are passing
through their deep waters! The more we medi¬
tate on the words, the more they are seen to
abound with a blessedness which far transcends
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 357
all our conceptions of their import, when they
are first brought under our consideration.
In the Psalms there are various assurances
of the most explicit and emphatic kind, that the
afflictions of God’s people will be succeeded by
joy and bliss in His own good time and way.
“ Weeping/’ we are told in the fifth verse of the
thirtieth Psalm, “ may endure for a night, but
joy cometh in the morning.” And in the fifth
verse of the hundred and twenty-sixth of the
same sweet songs of David, we have the assur¬
ance that they that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
“ He that goeth forth/’ it is added in the follow¬
ing verse, “ and weepeth, bearing precious seed,
shall doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing his
sheaves with him.”
The prophecies of Isaiah are exceedingly rich
in promises to the people of God, not only as
with reference to their deliverance from their
troubles, but to the happiness which shall follow
their having passed through the furnace. Though
the language be figurative, there is a delightful
passage, formerly given, to this effect, in the
seventeenth to the twentieth verses of the forty-
first chapter,—“ When the poor and needy seek
358 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth
for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God
of Israel will not forsake them. I will open
rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst
of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool
of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will
plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah-tree,
and the myrtle, and the oil-tree; I will set in the
desert the fir-tree, and the pine, and the box-tree
together; that they may see, and know, and con¬
sider, and understand together, that the hand of
the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of
Israel hath created it.” No one can read this
passage of Scripture without at once perceiving
that it has a spiritual signification as well as a
literal meaning; and many a saint of God, un¬
derstanding it in its higher and holier sense, has
extracted from it unspeakable comfort to his soul.
In the fifty-fourth chapter of the same prophet,
and at the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
verses, the same sentiment is expressed,—“0
thou afflicted,” says the prophet, “ tossed with
tempest, and not comforted! behold, I will lay
thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy founda¬
tions with sapphires. And I will make thy win-
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 359
dows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and
all thy borders of pleasant stones. And all thy
children shall be taught of the Lord; and
great shall be the peace of thy children.” Very
blessed to many a soul that had been submerged
in the waters of deep distress, has that other pas¬
sage proved which will be found in the first three
verses of the sixty-first chapter of the same book,
—“ The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me ; be¬
cause the Lord hath anointed me to preach good
tidings unto the meek: he hath sent me to bind
up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the
captives, and the opening of the prison to them
that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year
of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our
God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto
them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them
beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness ; that
they might be called Trees of righteousness, The
planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.”
One more quotation is all for which we can find
space from the pages of the evangelical prophet.
It is that to be met with in the eighteenth and
nineteenth verses of the sixty-fifth chapter,—
3(30 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER S LOVE
“But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that
which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a
rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will re¬
joice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people; and
the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in
her, nor the voice of crying.”
Let us now refer to one or two similar passages
in Jeremiah. In the thirty-first chapter of his
prophecies, and the twelfth verse, God says of
His afflicted people, “ that their soul shall be as a
watered garden, and that they shall not sorrow
any more. ” And in the next verse, still speaking
in His own person, He adds, “ I will turn their
mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and
make them rejoice from their sorrow.”
Omitting the numerous portions of the Divine
Word which might be quoted from the New
Testament, illustrative of the truth that we are
seeking to establish — passages which we the
more readily omit, because they are familiar to
every Christian mind—let us now glance at the
proofs of the love of God to His people in their
afflictions, which are furnished in the purposes
for which their troubles are sent to them. The
assurance has already been quoted of God’s mer-
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 361
ciful object in visiting His saints with great and
manifold troubles, which is given in the memo¬
rable words,—that it is not for God's pleasure
but His people’s profit, that they are afflicted.
But there are other parts of both Testaments in
which that truth is brought out with a blessed
force and fulness. Job had a clear perception of
the advantages of sanctified afflictions when, in a
verse before quoted, and which we need only now
in part repeat, he said ,—" Behold, happy is the man
whom God correcteth ! ” In the sixteenth verse of
the twenty-sixth chapter of the Prophecies of
Isaiah we meet with an illustration of the truth,
that God overrules the afflictions of His people
for their good. If He visits them with troubles,
it is that they may return—we say it with all
reverence—the visit that He has paid to them.
He visits them in providence, and they visit Him
in prayer. “ Lord," says the prophet, “ in trouble
have they visited thee : they poured out a prayer
when thy chastening was upon them." That is a
merciful visitation; that is a clear token of the
love which God cherishes towards His saints,
when His chastisements have the effect of leading
the tried and troubled believer to the throne of
362 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
grace. Be assured, all ye saints into whose hands
this work may come, that the greatest personal
manifestations of God’s mercy, the most unmis¬
takable tokens of His love you ever received from
His hands, were those particular visitations of His
providence which drove you the soonest and most
unreservedly to the throne of the heavenly grace.
All such dispensations of Divine Providence in¬
variably prove eminently conducive to the spiri¬
tual benefit of those who are exercised hereby.
There is another delightful development of the
truth, that God displays His love to His people
in their seasons of sorrow, by converting their
troubles into great blessings, in the tenth verse
of the forty-eighth chapter of the same book,—
“Behold, I have refined thee/’ says Isaiah, “but
not with silver; I have chosen thee in the fur¬
nace of affliction/’ There are two constructions
of which this passage will admit. God has chosen
many of His people in the furnace of affliction,
in reference to their conversion. They have been
made, when on a bed of sickness, or when over¬
whelmed with sorrows, springing from the loss
of friends or of property, or from some other
calamity—to see their sins for the first time in
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 363
their lives, and they have fled at once, by faith,
to the cross of Christ. But this is not the primary
' signification of the words. They mainly mean
that God often makes use of the afflictions which
befall His people, as the occasions of their deep
sanctification, and the consequent clear and con¬
clusive manifestation, to their own minds, of the
fact of their being His people. Many a saint of
God can, from his own blessed experience, set his
seal to the soundness of this view of the primary
meaning of the verse.
But instead of quoting further portions of the
inspired volume in illustration of this aspect of
the afflictions of God's people, let us look a little
at what their individual experience has been in
relation to the troubles and trials through which
they have had to pass, and then it will be seen in
the clearest manner, that God has eminently, and
in a way never to be forgotten, shewn His love to
His saints in their seasons of sorrow, and brought
the great truth home with irresistible force to
their minds, — that He does choose them, or
specially manifest His electing love to them, in
the furnace of affliction.
As this volume has already extended much be-
364 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
yond the dimensions which were originally con¬
templated, it will be necessary only to bring be¬
fore our readers a few out of the many illustra¬
tions of this aspect of our subject, which every¬
where meet the eye as it glances over the pages of
inspiration. Many a saint has been strengthened
by the implicit confidence which Job reposed in
God, when the afflicted patriarch said, at the very
moment that he seemed to human eye all but
overwhelmed with sorrow,—“ Though he slay me.
yet will I trust in him.” Probably no more re¬
markable expression of trust in God is to be
found in the Scriptures. Even if regarded purely
in an intellectual light, there is something sur¬
passingly forcible and felicitous in it. Only try
to realise what must have been the greatness of
Job’s trust in God, what the strength of His con¬
fidence in Him, when he could say, that even after
having been slain by God, he would still trust in
Him. Nothing but the most vivid perception of
his heavenly Eather’s affection, made to him in
his troubles, could have inspired the love to, and
trust in, God, which the sublime expression im¬
plies. Again, when speaking from his own ex¬
perience, in that passage in the seventeenth and
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 365
eighteenth verses of his fifth chapter, which we
transferred to our pages in a previous part of this
chapter, he says,—“Behold, happy is the man
whom God correcteth ; therefore despise not thou
the chastening of the Almighty: for he maketh
sore, and bindeth up; he woundeth, and his
hands make whole/’
No one could ever have expressed himself in
language like this, who did not speak from his
own personal experience of the blessedness of
sanctified affliction. And there is not a child of
God who may chance to read these pages, if, spi¬
ritually speaking, clothed and in his right mind,
that will not adopt and indorse the words of the
most afflicted man of whom we read in the volume
of inspiration. David has borne abundant testi¬
mony to the blessedness and benefit of afflictions.
“Blessed is the man,” he says, in the twelfth verse
of his ninety-fourth Psalm, clearly speaking from
his own experience, “whom thou chastenest, 0
Lord, and teachest him out of thy law.” And in
the hundred and nineteenth Psalm there are nu¬
merous acknowledgments of the love and mercy
which God displays to His children in their sea¬
sons of trial, and of the benefit they derive from
36G FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
the chastisements which they receive from their
heavenly Father. “ Before/’ he says, in the sixty-
seventh verse,—“ before I was afflicted I went
astray ; but now,” or since then, “ I have kept thy
word.” Very similar language is made use of
by David in the seventy-first verse,—“ It is good
for me that I have been afflicted.” And in the
seventy-fifth verse, formerly quoted, he says,—“ I
know, 0 Lord, that thy judgments are right, and
that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me.” Paul
even went so far, speaking from his experience of
the happiness of sanctified affliction, as to “ glory
in tribulation.” And he assigns the reason,—
“ Knowing that tribulation worketh patience ; and
patience, experience ; and experience, ho£>e.” His
testimony on this point will be found in the third
verse of the fifth chapter of his Epistle to the
Komans. In the seventeenth verse of the fourth
chapter of his second Epistle to the Corinthians
he speaks to the same effect, in even yet more
emphatic language. “Eor our light affliction,
which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”
And in referring, in the nineteenth verse of the
first chapter of his letter to the Pliilippians, to a
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 367
specific trial, he says,—“I know ”—observe the
confidence and certainty with which he speaks—
“I know that this shall turn to my salvation
through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit
of Jesus Christ/' I will not again quote what
he says in the twelfth chapter of the Hebrews,—
that God’s chastenings are proofs, not only of His
affection, but of His saints’ sonship. But what
is said by the chiefest of the apostles, in the
tenth and eleventh verses, bears so blessedly on
the point on which we are dwelling, that it cannot
be too deeply impressed on the believer’s mind,—
“ God,” he says, chastens us “not for his pleasure,
but for our profit, that we might be partakers of
his holiness.” Partakers of God’s holiness, par¬
takers of the Divine nature. And if that be the
object, and not only the object but the effect, of
the application of the rod to us, what child of
God will not only cheerfully bear the rod, but
embrace it, and adore and praise the Fatherly
hand that lays it on? We are told, in the next
verse, that no affliction “seemeth to be joyous,
but grievous: nevertheless it yieldeth the peace¬
able fruits of righteousness unto them which are
exercised thereby.” And this he said from his
368 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
own experience ; for he had been often and deeply
‘‘exercised thereby.” Janies, too, in his first
chapter and the twelfth verse, bears his testimony
to the blessedness which the believer derives from
the sorrows of his soul,—“Blessed,” says he, “is
the man that endureth temptation,” or trials, or
troubles in any form : “ for when he is tried, he
shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord
hath promised to them that love him.” And, to
quote only one passage more, Peter, in the seventh
verse of the first chapter of his first Epistle, says,
doubtless speaking of the other Christians’ trials
from his own,—“That the trial of your faith,
being much more precious than of gold that
perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be
found unto praise, and honour, and glory at the
appearance of Jesus Christ.”
We have thus referred to some of the many
passages with which the oracles of God are
crowded, relative to the blessedness and benefit
of sanctified afflictions. And surely if God does
overrule all the trials and troubles of His people
in so signal a manner for their good, it cannot be
necessary to add another word in confirmation or
illustration of the truth, which we have endea-
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 369
voured to impress deeply on the minds and hearts
of all believers,—that God eminently and especi¬
ally displays His love to His saints in their seasons
of sorrow.
It is now time we should draw this chapter to
a conclusion; but before doing so, let us make a
few observations, of a general nature, respecting
the afflictions of God’s people—in some cases re¬
iterating, for the purpose of more deeply impress¬
ing, what we have said before—regarded as proofs
of their heavenly Father’s love. We do this in
the hope that they may be found at once profit¬
able and comforting to their souls.
We have adverted to a variety of instances of
another kind from that we are about to adduce,
in which the saints of God have been sensibly
blessed amidst the greatest trials. Daniel was
happy, as well as safe, in the lions’ den; so were
the three children of God in the fiery furnace.
Paul and Silas sang songs in the night in prison,
when their feet were in the stocks. And in the
prospect of imprisonment, torments, and a violent
death, at a subsequent period of Paul’s history,
he could calmly and consequently say, — “None
of these things move me.” Others of God’s most
870 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
eminent people, in more recent periods of the
history of the Church, have derived such sensible
comfort and sanctification from afflictions, that
they have left it on record, that the happiest
hours they ever spent on earth, were those in
which they were lying helpless, so far as human
aid was concerned, in the furnace of affliction.
Bunyan, Kutherford, Brainerd, Jephson, and
thousands of other saints of God, distinguished
from their fellow Christians by their surpassing
spirituality of mind, have all set their seals to
the inexpressible blessedness of passing through
deep waters. Some, indeed, have even gone so
far as to express their regret that their troubles
were not of longer continuance. This was very
wrong, just as we remarked in the beginning of
this chajrier; it is sinful to ask God that He
would be pleased to send us afflictions. It is, in
effect, as we have said before, to arraign the
wisdom of God. It is tantamount to saying that
we are wiser than Him, and know better than
He does what is most for our good. It is right
to lie passive in the hands of our heavenly Father,
when He sends us troubles, and not to feel im¬
patient for recovery,—just as it is right and most
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SOEEOW. 371
commendable to welcome afflictions when they
come; but to dictate to God when He should
visit us with the rod, or to ask Him to give us a
greater number of strokes than He intended, is a
sin on the part of His saints of a very aggravated
nature. If God were to hear our prayers, either
for providential visitations of an afflictive kind,
or for our continuance in the fiery furnace, He
would but answer us according to our folly, and
no blessing whatever, but the reverse, would be
derived by us from such visitations. The afflic¬
tions which God himself sends, He will bless to
His people, and none other. We have no right
to make crosses for ourselves.
All the troubles which come to us in the dis¬
pensations of God’s providence, will most surely,
if we are His people, turn out for our advantage ;
and, for their sanctified use, as before observed,
we are not only permitted, but enjoined to pray;
but we have no warrant to pray for the sanctifi¬
cation of any troubles which we make to our¬
selves, nor to expect the Divine support under
them. Beware, believer, then, of making crosses
to yourself. Be content with those which God
makes for you; and anxiously seek, by prayer
372 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOYE
and by submission to your Father’s will, to ob¬
tain the sanctified use of all which He has, in
t
love and mercy, sent to you. And this you will,
sooner or later, assuredly obtain. You will most
probably be sensibly blessed during your afflic¬
tion, by having more vivid views than before of
the love of God, and clearer perceptions of His
infinite wisdom in putting you into the fiery fur¬
nace. And that will bring you into closer and
more frequent communion with Him. It will
lay, as it were, His very heart, in all its loving
nature, bare before you. But should this not
prove the case in your seasons of sorrow, the
blessing will come afterwards. It will not be
lost. It will only be deferred for a little—de¬
ferred, believer, until the very time when you
shall most stand in need of it. It may be with¬
held, in order that it may come with greater
power and sweetness, when that trouble has
passed away only to be succeeded by another and
a greater. Or it may be deferred until the time
that you shall have to pass through the dark
valley and the shadow of death, — deferred, I
mean, as regards its sensible enjoyment; for it is
very important for the people of God never to
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 373
lose sight of the great and gracious truth,—that
they often receive blessings of infinite and eternal
importance, though unconscious of the fact at the
moment, and, it may be, for a long time afterwards.
I feel assured that there is not a servant of God
who reads these pages, who cannot look back on
the past providential dealings with him, of His
Father in heaven, and say, that not only does he
now see a boundless blessedness in many a
trouble which God laid upon him, though he
could not discern the Divine love in it at the
time,—but that even those afflictions which he
regarded when enduring them, as indications that
God was dealing unkindly with him, are now felt
by him to have been pre-eminent among all the
things which have wrought together for his good.
But even should there be some instances—and
if there be any such, they are exceedingly rare—
in which the believer in Jesus may not in this
world be able to trace any sensible benefit to
particular dispensations of God’s providence, he
will, in the sanctuary above, most clearly see it,
rejoice in it, and praise and adore God for it,
without one moment's intermission through all
eternity. Just as the saints will then see that
374 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOYE
not one good thing has failed of all that the
Lord had promised, so they will, with a bright¬
ness of vision not less great, discern the glorious
truth, that God did overrule every affliction which
He sent to them when on earth, for their espe¬
cial good. Nor will this be all that the saints in
glory will learn of God’s dealings with them in
providence. They will then learn the special
benefit they so derived—its amount, and the
mode in which it was received by them. They
will then also wonder that they should at the
time not only have failed to hear the rod and
Him who had appointed it, but even in the
utterances of their ignorance and unbelief have
said,—“ All these things are against me/’ It will
then be seen—and God will receive from the
redeemed ascriptions of eternal glory for it—that
not only were afflictions indispensable alike to
their safety and sanctity at the time they were
sent, but that they were not one whit too severe.
They were just severe enough, and no more, to
answer the ends which God intended to accom¬
plish by them. It cannot be too often repeated
that our heavenly Father never puts one atom
more to the weight of His people’s afflictions
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 375
than is absolutely needful. This is a truth
which is often brought home with resistless
power to the mind of the believer on earth: it
will be most clearly seen and thankfully acknow¬
ledged in heaven. And so, too, with the nature
of the afflictions which God sends to His saints.
They are just—it cannot be too frequently re¬
iterated—the very trials and troubles that were
wanted. It would not be right to say that no
other kind of providential dispensation would
have accomplished God’s merciful purposes in
visiting His people with the rod. That would be
to limit the Holy One of Israel; but His infinite
wisdom, blended with His boundless love, is a
sufficient guarantee, that the particular visitation
was the wisest and the best. If the affliction
was heavy, it was not heavier than he who was
the subject of it was able to bear; for God in¬
variably, in the experience of all His people,
when passing through their deep waters, fulfils
His gracious promises to them,—“ My grace is
sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect
in weakness/’ “As thy day is, so thy strength
shall be/’
But it is not necessary to dwell at greater
37G FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
length on this j3oint. I trust that enough has
been said to satisfy the saints of God that all His
providential dealings with them are prompted
by infinite love, under the guidance of infinite
wisdom. It is easy to discern the hand of God
in every affliction which befalls His people; but.
it is my earnest desire that they should no less
clearly see in it the loving heart of their heavenly
Father. It is only when faith makes this dis¬
covery, that the believer can rejoice in tribula¬
tion, and say, in reference to the most painful
and trying scenes through which he has to pass
in his pathway to the eternal world,—“ He hath
done all things well.”
In connexion with the afflictions, whether
bodily or mental, whether secular or spiritual,
which the people of God have to endure in their
present probationary state, it is of importance to
advert for a moment to a feeling which is not
only exceedingly sinful, but is more or less fre¬
quently experienced by all believers. I allude
to their imagining that there is a peculiar some¬
thing in their cup of sorrow which makes it
more difficult for them cheerfully to drink, than
that which God puts into the hands of their
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 377
fellow-saints. They imagine, in other words,
that God is somewhat harder in His dealings
with them than with others of His people; and
that, if they were tried or afflicted in the same
way as others, they could bear their tribulations
with greater cheerfulness and resignation. This
is all a mistake. If you, believer, were to have
your own way, and were permitted by God to
exchange troubles with your fellow-saints, you
would soon find that your new trials were as
hard to bear as those for which they had been
substituted. Probably I ought to go further.
You might find them even harder to bear, and
wish to have your old ones back in their stead.
Though it may never have occurred to you, it
is not on that account less true, that your fellow-
believers may, in many cases, fancy that your
burthens are lighter than theirs, and would will¬
ingly have yours transferred to them, on con¬
dition that theirs could be transferred to you.
Be assured of this, that not only does God mani¬
fest His love to you by sending you afflictions,
but that He does no less display the favour He
has to you, by the very form or manner in which
He sends them. Do you know that in saying, in
878 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
your own minds,—“Any other trouble, Lord,
but the one under which I am groaning,” you
are arraigning the wisdom of God? You are
practically saying that you are wiser than Him.
You would not, I am aware, do this knowingly;
but you are doing it in effect, when you wish,
that since afflictions must really be your portion,
they had been sent to you in some other shape
than that in which they have come. God knows
best not only at what particular time, but in
what particular form, your trial ought to come.
Let this consideration teach you to render a
ready and cheerful acquiescence in all the ap¬
pointments of God, whether they relate to things
temporal or spiritual. Leave all in the hands of
your heavenly Father, and bless and praise His
name that they are in His hands, not in your
own. If you had the selection, be assured of
this, you would not make the right one. You
would choose such troubles as would fail to ac¬
complish those gracious purposes which God has
in view in all His providential dealings with His
people. The afflictions which He sends are not
only intended, but they are unerringly adapted
to bring to pass those merciful purposes towards
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 379
%
you which He has in His heart. And we repeat,
with all reverence, what we have before said,
that were your troubles to come in some other
shape than that in which they are sent, they
would not so well or so speedily, if at all, work
in you those gracious purposes which God has in
contemplation by them. Each trouble has some
special object in view, though you may not be
able to discern it at the moment. It is sent to
strike at the root of some secret or cherished sin
which might remain unaffected by any other
form of affliction. Has God suddenly deprived
you of worldly riches? then you may be sure
that your heart, though you may not have been
conscious of the fact, has been unduly set on the
treasures of earth. Do you mourn over the loss
of some beloved parent or child, or sister or bro¬
ther, or other relative or friend, dear to you as
your own soul, then depend on it, that such
earthly relative or friend has been too dear to
you,—been cherished so fondly by you as to
occupy, in a greater or less measure, that place
in your affections, which God alone wishes to
possess, and to the possession of which He &lone
has the right. And could your heavenly Father
880 FURTHER PROOFS OF THE FATHER’S LOVE
furnish, you with a greater proof of the fervency
of His affection for you, than He does in thus
desiring, and, let us add, determining by the dis¬
pensations of His providence, that He will occupy
the supreme place in your hearts ? How amaz¬
ing the thought, that such a God as ours is, could
thus set so high a value—even, if we may so
speak, an infinite value—on the love, not only of
worms of the dust, but of daring rebels against
His government! Meditate, believer, on that
wondrous fact. And, discerning clearly by the
teaching of God’s Word and Spirit, that all the
sorrows which He sends you in your present
state of being, are solely intended as a course of
discipline by which you may be brought closer
to Himself, and thereby be made happy in this
world, as well as sure of eternal happiness in the
world to come,—welcome every trial, be thankful
for every affliction. Begard all as fresh tokens
of God’s goodness, as renewed manifestations of
the unfathomable depths of affection there are
in His heart towards you. And never for one
moment let the suggestions of Satan so far pre¬
vail as to awaken a doubt in your minds, that the
particular troubles you are called to pass through,
TO HIS SAINTS IN SEASONS OF SORROW. 3S1
are just the troubles you needed. It will greatly
tend to sweeten your future afflictions, to feel a
thorough conviction of this truth,—that, what¬
ever they may be, they seemed to infinite Wisdom,
guided by infinite Love, absolutely necessary to
accomplish His gracious purposes in you, and
through you, and for you. And thus, alike with
respect to your present state of being, and that
state which will succeed when you have been
summoned from earth to those celestial regions
which eye hath not seen, and in which there are
such manifestations of God’s goodness and glory
as have never entered into the heart of man to
conceive,—you will feel an ever-deepening con¬
viction, that, both as regards His name and His
nature—“ God is Love.*
CHAPTER XIL
god’s love to his people in death and in
THE WORLD TO COME.
We have thus endeavoured to trace the infinite
love which God bears to His saints, from its
commencement in eternity—if that can be said
to have a commencement which is eternal—
through all its various and marked manifesta¬
tions in time. We have shewn that God regards
His people with the same boundless, unvarying
affection at every stage and step of their journey
through life. It now remains for us to bring
before the people of God a few of the many
proofs with which the Scriptures abound, that
He loves them in death, and will love them
throughout the never-ending ages of that world
which is to come.
That God loves His people in death as He did
in life, is a truth of which there are clear and
god’s love to his people. 883
conclusive proofs in every part of both divisions
of the Bible. But were there no other assurances
of this within the compass of Divine revelation
than that which is furnished by the Psalmist,
when he says,—“Precious in God’s sight is the
death of his saints/’—that is so striking and so
ample in its import, that it ought to be suffi¬
cient. The world can only see something great
or interesting in the death of those who have
distinguished themselves by deeds which fill the
mind with admiration. He who has lived a
brilliant life in literature, in art, or in arms, dies,
in the eyes of the mass of mankind, amidst a halo
of glory. In mere spiritual excellence they can
see nothing great, and consequently it is not to
be expected that they should discern any glory
in the death of the saints. Not so with God.
While the most illustrious of our unregenerated
race—speaking after the manner of men—are
passing through the dark and narrow path which
separates time from eternity, God sees nothing-
in them on which He can look with compla¬
cency. They have no worth in His view. They
are not precious in His sight. But the death
of His saints,—even the poorest, the humblest,
SS4 god’s love to his people in death
and most despised of their number,—is regarded
by Him with an infinite interest. It is precious
in His esteem beyond the power of the mind
to conceive. It may happen that some very poor
child of God, known to but few of his fellow-
men, and treated with contempt as well as with
neglect by those who do know him, may be led,
in God’s providence, to glance his eye over this,
the concluding chapter of this volume. If so,
let me say to him:—Though you may be un¬
thought of and uncared for by your fellow-men,
in death as you were in life, not having, it may
be, any one to close the eyes which have lost
their lustre, yet your death is precious in the
sight of God. His eye rests on you in Christ
Jesus, with an infinite complacency and delight.
In His sight your death is more precious than
the birth of unnumbered worlds.
In the thirteenth chapter and fourteenth verse
of Hosea, God himself, speaking in His own
name, gives a gracious assurance, by implica¬
tion, of the manifestation as well as the exist¬
ence of His love to His people in death. “ I
will,” He says, “ransom them from the power of
the grave; I will redeem them from death: 0
AND IN THE WORLD TO COME.
385
death, I will be thy plague; 0 grave, I will be
thy destruction.” This is said in reference to the
death of God’s saints; and what saint can read
the words, without seeing evidence of the clearest
kind that God loves His people in death as well
as in life ?
Very similar in substance is the well-known
passage in the fifty-fifth, fifty-sixth, and fifty-
seventh verses of the fifteenth chapter of the first
Epistle to the Corinthians, which Paul puts-into
the mouth of the believer in the contemplation of
a dying hour,—“ 0 death, where is thy sting ?
0 grave, where is thy victory? The sting of
death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
But thanks .be to God, which giveth us the vic¬
tory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
It is God himself who, by abundant manifes¬
tations of His love, and by ample communica¬
tions of His grace, thus disarms death of all his
terrors to believers, and gives them the victory
over the grave. It was from a clear apprehen¬
sion, and a settled conviction of this truth, that
David was enabled to look death in the face with¬
out the slightest feeling of dismay, and to give
utterance to the beautiful language in his twenty-
2 n
386 god’s love to his people in' death
third Psalm, which has, since his day, been
adopted by millions of believers, and blessedly
made their own,—“ Yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and staff
they comfort me.” Could God give a greater
proof of His love to His people in the imme¬
diate prospect, or in the actual process of death,
than in vouchsafing His gracious presence to
them, and in comforting them with His rod and
staff?
In his thirty-seventh Psalm and thirty-seventh
verse, David calls on the world as well as on
God’s people, to witness the death of a saint,—
“ Mark the perfect man,” he says, “ and behold
the upright: for the end of that man is peace.”
The saint is happy and peaceful in death, as he
was in life, because in the one as well as in the
other, he realises a sense of his heavenly Father’s
love. Often, indeed, the people of God are hap¬
pier far in the article of death, than they ever
were in life, because they know that all their
trials and troubles are over, and that they are
on the very eve of being received into the bosom
of that gracious Being, who has so wondrously
AND IN THE WORLD TO COME.
387
displayed His love to them, and whom, in return,
they have loved, since the days of their sensible
adoption into His family, with a supreme affec¬
tion.
What but a consciousness that he should be
loved by God in death, as he had been in life,
could have induced the good old Simeon to pray
for his departure out of this world? “Lord,
now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace : for
mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” And how
the heart of Paul must have heaved with joy, in
the conviction that God would love him in death,
when, in the verses already quoted, but which it
is necessary here to repeat, he said,—“ I am per¬
suaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor
any other creature, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus
our Lord.”
And the same Apostle, when he knew he was
approaching his latter end, had so great a sense
of the love of God to his soul, that he could, as
recorded in the sixth, seventh, and eighth verses
of the fourth chapter of his second Epistle to
388 god’s love to his people in death
Timothy, triumphantly say,—“For I am now
ready to be offered, and the time of my depar¬
ture is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I
have finished my course, 1 have kept the faith:
henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to
me only, but unto all them also that love his
appearing.”
And is not the same soul-sustaining and soul-
sanctifying truth equally evident in that portion
of the book of Eevelation, where the solitary
exile in the island of Patmos says,—“ Blessed are
the dead who die in the Lord.” What but the
love of God could make any intelligent being
happy or blessed when about to be ushered into
the eternal world? What but the sensible enjoy¬
ment of the love of God, at the time that heart
and flesh are fainting and failing, could support
and solace the spirit of the saint ?
With regard to God’s love in the state which
follows death, the saints need not to have such
proofs laid before them, as they require in re¬
gard to His love in the eternity that is past, or
to His love in their life and death in this world.
AND IN THE WOKLD TO COME.
389
And yet it may be well to glance, before closing
the volume, at a few of those assurances and
proofs, that God’s love will be enjoyed by His
people through all eternity, which are scattered
in such rich profusion through the whole of the
written Word.
The eternity of the believer’s soul begins as
soon as it has quitted the body. That moment
it wings its flight to the God who gave it,
and enters on a scene of bliss which shall be
alike boundless and unending. The instant it
reaches the realms of glory, it realises, in a
measure, far transcending all thought, the con¬
sciousness of God’s love which it enjoyed when
a prisoner within its clay tenement on earth.
Then the soul forms some conception of what
the greatness of God’s love is, from the happi¬
ness and glory which are its first celestial fruits.
It was because of the clear apprehension of this
truth which Paul had, that we hear of his long¬
ings to depart from this world, that he might be
with Christ, which, as he well knew, was far
better. Hence also the expression by the same
Apostle,—“For to me to live is Christ, and to
die is gain.” The same idea filled his mind
390 god’s loye to his people in 9 DEATH
with holy delight when he said in the eighth
verse of the fifth chapter of his second Epistle
to the Corinthians,—“We are confident, I say,
and willing rather to be absent from the body,
and to be present with the Lord.” The Apostle
John, too, had enraptured views of the happiness
and glory of which the soul is made the par¬
ticipant immediately after death, when, in the
thirteenth verse of the fourteenth chapter of his
apocalyptic visions, he exclaimed,—“ Blessed are
the dead who die in the Lord.”
But the felicity of the saints in heaven will not
be perfect until after the resurrection,—when the
soul, separated for a season from the body, shall
be re-united to it,—not in the state in which the
body formerly was when the soul was in alliance
with it, but to the body in a glorified state. The
bodies of the saints in heaven will be made like
unto Christ’s glorious body, and therefore, as would
readily be conceived, even were Scripture silent
on the subject, the resumption of the relationship
on the part of the soul with a body so glorious,
will contribute incalculably to the happiness of
the just made perfect. And in producing that
great and gracious result, the saints in glory will
AND IN THE WORLD TO COME.
391
have views of the love of God, compared with
which their perceptions of the Father’s love, when
here, were unworthy of the name. No wonder
that Paul, as he looked by the eye of faith within
the veil, and had some glimmerings of what was
in reversion for him there, said with a special
emphasis,—“For the sufferings of this present
life are not worthy to be compared with the glory
which shall be revealed in us.” It was the same
vision of a bright and blessed destiny in the world
to come, which drew from him, in a verse already
quoted, the well-known language,—“Our light
afflictions, which are but for a moment, work out
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of
glory.” That glory—the glory to be revealed—
is depicted, in more or less vivid language, in
almost every book in either of the two Testa¬
ments ; but there is something transcendently
sublime in the description given of the happiness
of heaven, in the visions which John had, in his
isolation from his species on the “ isle called Pat-
mos.” Unseen by human eye, and unheard by
human ear, he there communed with his Maker,
and enjoyed a nearness of access to God, and a >
fulness of revelation from Him,—such, perhaps,
392 god’s loye to his people in death
as no other saint before or since his day has been
privileged to possess. The glorified saints, he
tells us, in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
verses of the seventh of his apocalyptical visions,
“are before the throne of God, and serve him
day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth
on the throne shall dwell among them. They
shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more ;
neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.
For the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne,
shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living
fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away
all tears from their eyes.” There is something
very remarkable and inconceivably blessed in the
latter words. The same expression, “ God shall
wipe away all tears from their eyes,” occurs in
the fourth verse of the twenty-first chapter. We
need not say that—literally or strictly speaking
—there will be no tears in heaven. The perfect,
unchangeable, and eternal bliss, inseparable from
the celestial regions, precludes the possibility of
tears. If there could be tears in heaven, they
would be tears of joy, of love, and of gratitude.
If the eye ever could be moistened in the sanc¬
tuary above, it would be because the soul was
AND IN THE WORLD TO COME.
393
overpowered by a sense of the love, the goodness,
and the grace of God. The expression, “God
shall wipe away all tears from their eyes/' merely
expresses—but what a wondrous force and felicity
there is in the expression!—the infinite tender¬
ness and condescension of God to His saints in
glory. It gives such a view of His fatherly and
overflowing affection for His people in their glori¬
fied state as ought to overpower the mind of every
believer of the present day—-just as it did that
of John, by whom the bright and blessed vision
of the happiness of God’s people in the celestial
city was seen, nearly two thousand years ago.
As stated in other parts of his apocalyptic book,
John had other no less glorious visions of the
0
bliss to be enjoyed by the saints in heaven, as the
fruit of the love of their God and Father. In
the twenty-first chapter and twenty-second and
twenty-third verses, he says,—“ I saw no temple
therein : for the Lord God Almighty and the
Lamb. are the temple of it. The city had no
need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in
it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the
Lamb is the light thereof.”
And in the fifth verse of the twenty-second
394 god’s loye to his people in death
chapter we are told,—“ There shall be no night
there; and they need no candle, neither light of
the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light:
and they shall reign for ever and ever.”
But why dwell on the manifestations of the
Father’s love to His people in heaven? When
the pearly gates have once been passed, the
glorified saints will never more doubt the love
of God to them. It will not only be then seen
in everything around them, but be realised, ex¬
perienced, and felt within them, with a power of
which we cannot at present form the slightest
conception. Just only let the saint on earth try
to picture to his own mind all that is involved in
that one brief expression,—“God will be their
glory.” The difficulty of the redeemed in heaven,
—if the word difficulty could at all be applied
with propriety to heaven,—will be, not as to their
sense of God’s love to them, but in believing that
God ever could have so loved them as they will
then find He has done. Every countenance—
equally of angels as of men—will be radiant
with an expression which will forcibly, though
silently, proclaim the perfect consciousness which
all enjoy of their being the objects of God’s infi-
AND IN THE WORLD TO COME.
395
nite love. And every voice in that vast throng
will be unceasingly engaged, so long as eternity
shall last, in rendering ascriptions—coming from
the lowest depths of every heart—of praise, and
honour, and glory to God for the great love with
which He loves His redeemed people. And these
experiences and utterances, be it remembered,
will not be deferred until some distant period in
the annals of eternity. They will be contempo¬
raneous with the saints’ admittance to the man¬
sions above. From the moment the curtain falls
on them, as they make their exit from this world,
and have been conducted to their place at the
right hand of God,—from that moment they will
begin to learn, in a way and to an extent they
never did, or could have done on earth, what is
included in the words of our title-page,—“ God
is Love but when unnumbered ages have
become a portion of the eternity that is past,—
ages more numerous than the sands on the sea¬
shore,—they will still find that they are but
beginning to enter into the import and blessed¬
ness of the wondrous words. They will be ever
learning through all eternity, but will never be
able to come to the full knowledge of what is
896 PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT OP THE SUBJECT
involved in tlie truth which forms the subject of
this volume. But if, the instant they have
passed the portals of the celestial city, the re¬
deemed from among- men will be made partakers
of a bliss, as the fruits of their Heavenly Father’s
affection, far transcending their loftiest concep¬
tions on earth,—we leave it to the minds of
those believers, into whose hands this volume
may come, to form the best ideas they can of
the extent of the blessedness which, when
countless ages have rolled away, and been ab¬
sorbed in a by-gone eternity, will be seen and
felt to be comprehended in the words,—“ God
is Love.”
Probably there is no subject within the
whole compass of revealed truth which is more
fitted for practical improvement to the believer,
than that on which we have been dilating.
What could make a deeper impression on the
minds and hearts of those who have realized a
sense of it in their own souls, than the eternal,
spontaneous, infinite love of God to a ruined
race P It is a wondrous and soul-transporting
theme, and, as before remarked, it will continue
to be unceasingly so through all eternity. But its
PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 397
effects on the minds of believers in Christ must
not be confined to mere admiration, or even
adoration. It ought to exercise a practical in¬
fluence on the life; and it will do so wherever
it is duly discerned by the mind and felt in the
heart. We are bound by obligations of the
most solemn kind to love God in return for His
free, unpurchased, boundless love to us, made all
the more marvellous when we reflect on the cir¬
cumstances—the sufferings and death of His
own dear Son—under which it has been mani¬
fested towards us. And all God’s saints do love
Him, because He first loved them. Their love to
God, in return for His love towards them, is not,
in the case of all His people, the same in degree ;
but still, it does exist and glow in the bosom
of every believer. And every believer longs for
and strives to possess an increasing fervour of
affection for that God who has loved him from
all eternity with a love too deep ever to be
fathomed by men or angels, and which is as
unchangeable as is the nature of Him who is
without variableness or shadow of turning,—a
love, moreover, which will be as enduring as
the existence of God himself.
398 PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT OF THE SUBJECT.
And believers are no less bound to give a
practical expression of their love to God, than
they are to feel and cherish that love in their
bosoms. “ If ye love me,” says Jesus, “keep
my commandments.” And what Jesus said to
His disciples in the days of His earthly sojourn,
God says to us from off His throne in glory.
The angels practically express their love to God
by seeking on all occasions, and under all cir¬
cumstances, to do His revealed will; and in
that fact an implied rebuke is administered to
us, for they have not the same cause to love
God, and to manifest their love by doing His
revealed will, which we the descendants of fallen
Adam have; for Christ did not, nor was it the
will of his Father he should, dignify the angels
by taking their nature on Him; but He took on
Him our nature, and in that nature suffered
and died for us. We are therefore laid under
greater obligations than angels to give a prac¬
tical expression of our love to God, which is
to be done by an earnest and uniform desire to
render obedience to the Divine commandments
in every possible manner, at all times, and under
all circumstances. And with what a supreme
PRACTICAL J MPRO VEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 399
pleasure ouglit all God’s people thus habitually
to aim at expressing their love to Him who has
so loved them from all eternity, and will so
love them through all the eternity that is to
come.
Nor is it less the duty of all the saints of God
to seek to bring others to love Him with all
their heart, with all their souls, with all their
strength, by directing their minds to the con¬
templation of His infinite and eternal love to
a lost world. This at once glorifies God, and is
the sure way to benefit and to bless, for time and
eternity, our fellow men. And as it is the duty
of believers thus to act towards those around
them, so they ought to regard it as the highest
privilege which they can enjoy on this side their
“ Heavenly Home.” It is a privilege, too, we
ought to remember, that will terminate with our
existence on earth. There will be no beings in
heaven who shall need our counsels to love God
supremely, and to manifest their love to Him
by doing His holy will. All there will, from
the necessity of their moral natures, love God
supremely, and serve Him with perfect hearts
and willing minds. Let us, therefore, gladly
400 PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT OP THE SUBJECT.
and gratefully avail ourselves of every oppor¬
tunity which presents itself to us, while here
below, of practically proclaiming to all around
how profound is the sense we entertain of the
obligations under which we lie to love that
God who so loved us as to give up His only
begotten and dearly-beloved Son to an igno¬
minious and excruciating death, that we might
not only escape the dismal doom which must
otherwise have been ours through endless ages
to come, but be made the heirs of a happiness
in heaven, at once inconceivably great in degree
and eternal in duration.
I have thus dwelt at considerable length, and
I trust with pleasure and profit to many of my
readers, on a theme which is incomparably the
most glorious and most wonderful theme in the
illimitable universe of God. No one who has
read what I have written can fail to perceive
the practical improvement which every believer
ought to make of the subject. If God has
loved us with an infinite and eternal affection,
and has given expression to His love by send¬
ing His own Son, in our nature, to our world,
to obey and suffer and die for us, is not the
PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT OE THE SUBJECT. 401
inference as plain, as if it were inscribed in
legible letters in tbe firmament above our
heads, that we are thereby laid under the
deepest and most solemn obligations to love
God in return ? Surely love so amazing as
that which God hath cherished towards His
people from all eternity, and to which He has
given a practical manifestation in the iucarna¬
tion, sufferings, and death of His own dear
Son, ought to inspire us with an affection
towards Him immeasurably too great to be ex¬
pressed by any language which we can employ.
When we contemplate the love of God to us
under the various aspects in which I have
endeavoured, however imperfectly, to present
to the minds of those into whose hands this
volume may fall, do we not see more clearly
than we ever did before the justice and the
force of the demand which God makes on us
when He claims our supreme affections in re¬
turn ? If it be in His view the greatest of all the
Divine commandments that we should love the
Lord our God with all our hearts, with all our
soul, with all our strength, surely no saint of
His will withhold his assent to the reasonable-
2 c
402 PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT OF THE SUBJECT.
ness of the claim which God thus makes on us.
It is true that so long as we are in our present
probationary state, ever exposed to the corrup¬
tions inherent in our nature, and to tempta¬
tions from without, we never can make the
unreserved surrender of our affections to Him
which He demands, and which is our reason¬
able service to present to Him. But though
while in this world no child of God can love
Him as He ought to be loved, yet surely no one
will make that an excuse for not seeking to
love God better than he has hitherto done. If
we cannot while here below love God as we
ought, let us at least seek to love Him as we
may be made to love Him through the grace
and the power of the Holy Spirit. And as
there are no means so much adapted than close
and constant meditation on God’s love to us,
to increase day by day our love to Him, until
His love is made perfect in glory, let each of
us resolve that the love of God to us, as re¬
vealed in Christ Jesus His Son, shall hence¬
forth be the great theme of our contemplation.
But this must not be all. Our love to God, as
the effect of His love to us, must not rest in mere
PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 403
sentiment; there must be something more than
that. The feeling must be expressed in a prac¬
tical form. We must serve God as the fruit of
our loving Him. What was said by Christ
when He dwelt among men —“ If ye love me,
keep my commandments ” — is equally ad¬
dressed by God the Father to all His people.
Indeed, if we do not cordially and constantly
consecrate ourselves to the service of God, the
fact will conclusively prove that we have no
real or right love to God at all.
And should we, by the teaching and grace
of the Holy Spirit, be brought to this holy
and happy state of mind, we shall all feel that
the solemn obligations imposed upon us by the
eternal and boundless love of God to us will
not end there. All of us shall feel that it is
our bounden, as it ought to be felt by us to be
our blessed, duty to seek to promote the glory
of God in the world by endeavouring to lead
all with whom we come into contact, in the
respective spheres in which we have been
placed by Providence, to love and serve Him
with all their hearts while they have a being
on earth, as the prelude to a perfect love and a
404 PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT OF THE SUBJECT,
nobler service in that brighter and better world
to come, to which every believer in Jesus is on
his way, and will, when a few more years at
the farthest have succeeded those which have
gone before them, most surely reach.
the end.
Y1BTUE AND CO., PKINTEKS, CITY BO AD, LONDON
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
i.
Lately published , price 5s. in cloth , or 5s. 6d. beautifully done
up in gilt edges , the Eighth Edition of
GOD IS LOYE;
OR,
GLIMPSES OE THE FATHER’S INFINITE AFFECTION
FOR HIS PEOPLE.
The following extract, wliicli will be read with much in¬
terest, is from a letter written by an excellent Christian
lady and able authoress, addressed to the Editor of The
Gospel Magazine, in which she relates a deeply-touching
incident caused by the perusal of “ God is Love —
“ Your review of the book ‘ God is Loye ; or, Glimpses op
the Father’s infinite Affection for His People,’ brings a
circumstance to my mind that may prove useful to relate, as a
word of encouragement to the author in his work and labour of
love, and to your Christian readers in furthering its circulation.
I was cast into company last month with an aged lady, who,
taking up a book that lay on her table, said, ‘ This is the third
copy I have bought of this book, and I mean to recommend it to
everybody. It is called “ God is Love.” ’ On being asked why
she liked it, she said, £ Because it explained to me why I love
God. It opened up to me that God elected me because He loved
me, and that is the reason I love Him. I never saw this so
plainly till I read that book. Now,’ continued the old lady,
‘ that may seem a great thing to get out of the book ; but I have
got something better still.’ To know what was better than that,
excited the question directly, ‘ What more did you get ?’ ‘ I was
deeply interested in the book,’ she said; ‘ but for all I am an
DARTON & CO., 42, PATERNOSTER ROW.
2
WORKS EY THE SAME AUTHOR.
old woman, eighty-four, and have been what the world calls
decidedly pious for many years, and I really do hope honestly
seeking Jesus, yet I could never look up to God, and say, My
Father! I often wondered would God let me die in this state ;
and many, many prayers have I put up to God about this very
thing. But one day, while I was reading this book, I came to
the words, “ My Heavenly Father •” and as I read them a light
seemed to dart into my mind, and with it such a lovely, such a
beautiful feeling; it seemed to say, I am your Father—your
Heavenly Father. I put down the book. I fell upon my knees
I felt as if I could weep my life away for joy and gladness, and
all I could say over and over again was, My Heavenly Father—
my own dear Father.’ ”
“ A treasure of comfort and edification. The author brings
together a marvellous store of Scriptural passages, setting forth
the love of God. The fourth chapter retains all the richness of
the one which precedes it, increasing in tenderness, and filling
the soul unutterably full of the thought that God is Love. Then
follow two admirable chapters, succeeded by one of uncommon
interest on the love of God as manifested in the mission of
Christ unto our world; while the love of the Father is set forth
by endless proofs. The book is one which you will take up
again and again whenever you feel your heart needing something
to melt and comfort it; and when you are disposed to say,
‘ Nearer, my God, to thee.’”— Watchman.
II.
Just Published , price 5s. in cloth , or 5s. 6c?. beautifully done up
in gilt edges, the Fourth Edition of
THE COMFORTER;
OR,
THE HOLY SPIRIT IN HIS GLORIOUS PERSON AND
GRACIOUS WORK.
“ It is the most remarkable production that ever issued from
the pen of a British layman. We anticipate for the work not
merely immediate and extraordinary favour, but a wide-spread
and long-enduring popularity .”—British Standard.
BARTON & CO., 42, PATERNOSTER ROW.
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
3
** An invaluable volume. Were we attempting to express our
convictions of the practical value of this treatise, we should be
charged with exaggeration. By practical value, we mean its
effect upon the sermons of the preacher who shall thoroughly
digest it, and its effect, through those sermons, upon the con¬
gregations that shall hear them. All is life, vigour, earnestness,
point. And we felt —which, after all, is the best criterion of
the value of a w r ork of this class—we felt it to be, what it can¬
not but prove to the thousands who will read it, a real Com¬
forter.” — Christian World.
“We strongly doubt if any one of the present Bench of
Bishops, with all the ‘learned leisure’ which their position affords,
could have produced a work of equal merit; and if any one of the
Bight Bev. Lords could, we only know it would reflect credit on
the individual, and lustre on the order to which he belongs.”—
Liverpool Herald. [Second Notice.]
“ Of the author’s acquaintance with the rules of Scripture
exegesis he has given us many splendid specimens. Nor can we
overlook the deep fervour and unction by which the whole work
is characterized. The author, in fact, seems to be all on fire with
his subject. His whole heart is in it, and his best energies have
been consecrated to it. Besides being a triumphant vindication
of the Personality and Divinity of the Holy Spirit, the over¬
whelming earnestness by which the work is characterized is well
fitted to awaken and sustain the deepest interest. We would
like to see a copy of the volume in every minister’s library in
the land .”—Scottish Press.
III.
Also, just published, price 5s. in cloth, or 5 s. beautifully
done up in gilt edges, the Third Edition of
GOD’S UNSPEAKABLE GIFT;
OR,
VIEWS OE THE PEBSON AND WOBK OE
JESUS CHBIST.
“ We rejoice in the popularity which attends the works of the
gifted author. In this volume he sets forth the most Scriptural
DABTON & CO., 42, PATEBNOSTEB BOW.
4
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
truths concerning the person, the offices, and the work of our
blessed Saviour, in language at once simple, vigorous, and
attractive. At any time such a volume as the present would
be valuable, but it is more especially so at a period when the
truths concerning the imputed righteousness and substitutional
sacrifice of Christ are assailed from so many different quarters.”
— Record.
“ To find one of the most prolific and vigorous public writers
of the day—a man whose athletic understanding, dauntless
coui’age, unflinching integrity, and fervent patriotism render
him a power in Courts and Parliaments—amid all the turmoil
and distraction by which he is daily and nightly surrounded, so
vividly realizing the unseen, is alike monitory and remarkable.
The production of these six volumes, instead of being the result
of the redeemed hours of a few years, would, for most men, have
sufficed both for the work and the honour of a lifetime .”—British
Standard.
[Nearly the whole of the religious journals reviewed this
volume in substantially the same terms.]
IV.
Also, this day is published, price 5 s. in cloth , or 5 s. 6