have everlasting life." "He gave His Son." We know the exceeding difficulty with which a parent is induced to tear himself away from an only child. If the child is to be parted with to adverse or doubtful fortunes, the struggle is more dreadful still. If an only son is to be sent to a war upon the losing side, where daily risks have to be run, daily hardships to be encountered, and a violent death is all but certain, some one strong absorbing passion must have got the mastery of the parent's heart, before he could be brought to consent to such a sacrifice. Now this is the aspect under which God would have us think of His Love. His Son, of glory equal, of majesty co-eternal with His own, had lain in His Bosom from all eternity, had been bound to Him in that closest of all unions, the unity of the Godhead. But God went forth in the longings of ardent parental affection to those created children of His, who had abandoned communion with Him, and in whom His Image (the image at least of His moral perfections) was altogether effaced. Not the smallest signs of a better mind did they give; every cry which reached Heaven from earth was a cry of defiance and hostility; but as the undutifulness of a son does not stifle the father's affection and anxiety to reclaim him, so the fall of man did not repress the tenderness of God's Love for him, but on the other hand called forth the most wonderful exercise of it. Rather than that His created children should perish eternally, God preferred making over His uncreated Son to hardship, and

toil, and a bloody and shameful death on their behalf. That bloody and shameful death was in the counsels of His wisdom expiatory of sin; it was a satisfaction of the Divine justice; and it harmonized all the Divine perfections with the salvation of man. This, however, is not the point in it to which attention is now called. We are not speaking of the efficacy of the Sacrifice, but of the Love of God in providing the Sacrifice. It is of no small importance, as we have said in an earlier Chapter, to observe this distinction. "We love Him," says the Apostle, not because He has conferred a particular and high benefit upon us,not even because He has given His Son for us,but "because He first loved us.' It is the Love of God which attracts our gratitude, not the benefit which, in the exercise of that Love, He hath conferred. The affections of the human heart cannot be constrained by benefits, independently of the mind of the benefactor. And therefore, if our hearts are to be given to God, the thing which we need first and before all other things is assurance of His sympathy. And of this He has vouchsafed to us the strongest and most irrefragable assurance in the gift of Christ. This gift we must strive to view, not only in its own intrinsic preciousness, as being the ransom of our souls, but in the Love which dictated it.

4. The last point which I shall mention for the obtaining of faith in God's Love, is the acting as if we had it. The ten lepers in the Gospel were bidden to

go and show themselves to the priests, before they were cleansed. Now the purpose of showing themselves to the priests was, that they might receive ceremonial purification, which the priests were directed not to confer unless they had first ascertained that the leper was actually made whole. These lepers were instructed then to act upon an assumption, which was not yet realized; and in the acting upon it they found it realized; "it came to pass," we read, "that as they went, they were cleansed." Until therefore you obtain a lively faith and love, act as far as possible on the assumption that you have them. Endeavour to foment in your heart the poor faith and love which you at present have. Think much of God's Love as manifested, not only to mankind at large, but to yourself in particular. Express yourself towards Him in prayer as if you loved Him. Review His mercies in detail, and thank Him for them specifically. Praise Him with as much fervour as you at present are master of, in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs. 'Aspire to God by brief but ardent "ejaculations of your heart; admire His beauty; invoke "His assistance, and cast yourself in spirit at the foot "of His cross; adore His goodness; treat with Him "often on the great concern of your salvation; give "your soul to Him a thousand times a day; make a "thousand different sorts of motions in your heart to "excite you to a passionate and tender affection '.' Stretch out your hand to Him as a child to a father, 1 From the "Vie Dévote" of S. François de Sales.

that He may conduct you; and while you are thus musing the fire shall kindle; your faith shall seem to burst through the superincumbent load of your natural corruption; and the Love of God, shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Ghost which is given you, shall return again into His Bosom, as rivers return into the great deep, whose full-charged fountains sent them forth.

CHAPTER XII,

OF THE LOVE OF GOD AS INVOLVING ANTIPATHY TO EVIL.

"We that love the Lord, hate evil."-Ps. xcvii. 10.

THE

HE first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and all thy mind, and with all thy strength."

Hence it is supremely important to ascertain how far we fulfil this commandment. And yet perhaps there is no point respecting our spiritual state which it is more hard to ascertain. There is no point on which the naturally deceitful heart is more apt to deceive us. And the reasons of this proneness to selfdeceit upon a question so important are obvious. First, as the Apostle John says, "No man hath seen God at any time." And our ideas of that which we have never seen are necessarily undefined and vague. Mere description, however accurate, can never convey any thing fully. And, therefore, our very notion of God being vague, our obligation to love Him becomes some