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moment that we can make ourselves understood by a child, we ought to begin to use all the influence in our power with that child for God. "It is easy," said an old writer, "to master an arrow, and set it right, ere the string be drawn: but when once it is shot, and in the air, and the flight begun, then you have no power at all to command it." How many a parent has learnt the truth of this when it was too late to remedy his early neglect. O then, teach the child to call conscience into his councils from his earliest years, for the conscience of a little child, though defiled by the infection of a fallen nature, is yet unhackneyed and unhardened by the defilements of a fallen world. Endeavour constantly to set his conscience right by the word of God, even as you set your household clock by the sun-dial, and teach him day by day to do this for himself, and so to keep his conscience right with the word of God. And may God the Spirit bring the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ into the heart of his young disciple, and reveal to him the love of God which passeth knowledge, and abide as the Comforter with him in sweet and holy fellowship. Then, long after your grey and weary head is laid low in the quiet grave, he and his children after him shall rise up to

bless you.

SERMON V.

LOVE.

1 JOHN IV. 10.

"Herein is love; not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

THE Epistles of St. John draw the attention of the reader continually to one subject-Divine love the love of God to man, and the return of that love from man to God; and love, divine and heavenly in its character, from man to man. The character of the disciple whom Jesus loved shines in his writings, and as it has been well remarked by a valued friend of my own,* "This peculiar character is perhaps never so forcibly brought out before us, as when we compare his writings with those of his comrade Peter. The spirit of their master's compassionate mercy and loving kindness dwells in both, but how different is its outward expression. There is an authoritative strain in Peter's style, a beseeching in St.

* See the Rev. R. W. Evans's Scripture Biography.

John's. Peter's is varied in topics, nervous in language, full of his natural impetuosity and fire. John's is confined to one or two leading ideas, redundant in phrase, and overflowing with sweetness and simplicity. There is a menacing in the warnings of Peter, a deprecation in the admonitions of John. In one we plainly discover the character of him who drew the sword for his master; in the other, of him, who lay with his head in the bosom of his master."

I. Herein is love! In the passage I have brought before you, the apostle speaks to us of the only love, which is worthy of the name; and this verse is like a motto to the whole epistle. The love of God to man-the vast spring, and fountain-head of real love. Herein is love! not that we loved God, but that He loved us. Love is herein, even in its spring of unfathomable depth. And the outpouring of this deep spring of love produces the return of love from us. We love Him, because He first loved us. Well may the apostle exclaim, "Not that we loved God," or, not that there is anything extraordinary about the character of our love to Him; not that our love to Him furnishes any great example of love, for we have every reason to love Him; and were we not so fallen, so corrupt, so sinful, as we are, to love Him, would be so natural, that it

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would require no effort. At any rate, it is no matter of astonishment when we love Him; the wonder is when we do not love Him; and our love when we give it to Him, has nothing so very uncommon in its nature, nothing so very surpassing in its fervour; it is the grateful return from our hearts for all His goodness, and His mercy, and His grace to us, and it is but a poor return at best. Nay, if we were holy and even perfect creatures, there would be no subject of astonishment in our love to Him. As it would be with our service; if we had done all in our power, we should be but unprofitable servants, we should have done that which it was our duty to do; so would it be with our love, had we loved Him perfectly, there is nothing to be wondered at in the love of a man to one who has loaded him with benefits, who has left no way untried of doing good to him.

But to love a vile and heartless enemy, and for a perfectly unoffending Being to do this; to love an impure and unholy creature, and for a pure and holy Being to do this; to love a false, rebellious, most ungrateful wretch; to shew kindness the most gentle and pitying to such a one; to bear with him long, even with unexampled patience; to forgive him over and over again; to plead with him, to suffer for him ;

Herein is love, and this is the love of God! thus God hath loved us! loved us, notwithstanding all our guilt, all our wickedness, all our provocations, all our ingratitude. Herein, indeed, is love!'

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II. Herein consider the Love of God in sending His dear Son to be the propitiation for our sins, and in accepting the costly propitiation. The great God of heaven and earth, the great Author of all things around, above, beneath us, declared His love in the creation of the beautiful and glorious earth, which came forth perfect from His hands, for it is said, “and God saw every thing that He had made, and behold it was very good, and God blessed it." Having made the earth for man, He formed man to live in it, as happy and as blessed as every thing around him. Herein was love, and herein also, in that God loved us, not that we loved God. After God's work of creation, in the world, and in man's own image, had been marred, defaced, and despoiled, He still had thoughts of love to man; and the Godhead who had said, "Let us make man," said also, "Let us save man!" 'Herein is love,' for as it is written in that very striking portion of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, the fifth chapter— we find it declared first at the 6th verse—“When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ

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