Father to His reconciled children is no longer the love of a pitiful compassion, but the satisfied and rejoicing love of a delighted complacency. 'The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.'

5. The sky is exquisitely beautiful. Every person thinks so. The sage and the savage, the philosopher and the peasant, the old and the young, are all agreed about this. It has neither spot nor wrinkle nor any such thing. We all instinctively exclaim, as we gaze into its azure depths, How beautiful! And yet the beauty of the sky is only a far-off shadow of the absolute beauty of God. He is the Supreme Loveliness, 'the altogether lovely.' He is lovely in His nature which is Love, lovely in His character which is perfectly holy, and lovely in all His works and ways which are unspeakably charming, harmonious and good. It is impossible to conceive of anything lovelier than Love, and 'God is love.' All His perfections are the attributes of Love, and every beautiful thing in the universe is an emanation from and a manifesta

tion of the beauty of God. The Divine Love was most fully revealed, and His Loveliness most perfectly manifested, in and by Jesus Christ. He was the incarnate embodiment of the Perfect Love, and also the personal exhibition of the Perfect Loveliness-' God manifested in flesh.' He that hath seen me,' said Jesus, 'hath seen the Father,' and 'he that knoweth the Son knoweth the Father also.' So long as the minds of men are blinded by sin and their hearts defiled by moral uncleanness, they are unable to apprehend the Divine beauty, and have no longings for the Divine love. But when they permit the eyes of their hearts to be opened by the Divine Word and Spirit, and the fountain of their moral nature to be cleansed by the great Purifier, then do they see, and with ever-increasing clearness, the greatness of God's Love, and have the blissful desire awakened within them to become partakers of His Loveliness. Ay! and His love and loveliness will become theirs, just in proportion as they believe His gospel, receive His Spirit, and appropriate His grace. The pure crave for purity, and loving hearts for more love. The pure in heart shall see God,'

N.B.S.

7

and realize more and more fully for evermore the attractiveness of the Divine nature and character. And not only so, but they will also be impelled to pray, 'Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,' and as their prayer is graciously and freely answered, they themselves will become increasingly the joyful recipients of the Divine love, and partakers of the Divine loveliness, until at last when their nature and character are perfected they shall be all love and altogether lovely, like the Christ of God and God Himself. Meanwhile, as the sky enfolds every sun, planet and star in its tender embrace, so likewise does the Divine Father put the strong arms of His compassion and power around every one of His children. And while breathing His own sweet peace into believing and loving hearts, He gently soothes their fears and encourages their faith, by reminding them of the assurance, 'The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.' The tender enfolding of the infinite love, is like the all-embracing affection of a mother, or the encompassing arms of the universal ether. The eternal God, rideth in His excellency on the sky.'

CHAPTER VIII

THE SUN AS A SYMBOL

In ancient times the

APART from all the astonishing facts concerning the Sun which science has discovered and made known, the great orb of day merely as an object of contemplation is grandly glorious. To the seer and the savage, the philosopher and the peasant, it is alike great and wonderful. In many ages and by many peoples it has even been worshipped as a god. Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the fire-worshippers of Persia adored the sun. And of all the idols of heathendom, it was surely the most refined and exalted. Even the Jews in the days of Ezekiel were guilty of this form of idolatry. Although they had been expressly commanded not to bow the knee to any of the orbs of heaven, yet in periods of national backsliding and moral degeneracy they fell into the practices of surrounding heathen nations.

But while the sun may not be worshipped, it is at least the sublime and suggestive symbol of the Worshipful One, by whom it was created.

We have seen that the Sky is a perfect and most beautiful symbol of the Great Infinite Spirit, and now we shall see with equal clearness of apprehension that the Sun is a symbol of Christ. Everything that the sun is to the heavens and the earth, so is the Son of the Father and the Son of Man to God and to humanity.

Think

As the natural

Sky, so is the

first, of His relationship to God. S-u-n is in the bosom of the Divine S-o-n in the bosom of the Father. The sun is the great illuminator of the solar system of which it is the centre, and the Visible God is the Supreme Revealer of the Invisible God to the great moral universe of which He is the Head. 'No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.' Think also, All that the sun is of His relationship to men. to the earth, so is the Saviour of mankind to every believing soul. The functions fulfilled by the one are exactly analogous to those accomplished by the other.