Knowledge of the Holy Part 5

It is sometimes said, 'Justice requires G.o.d to do this,' referring to some act we know He will perform. This is an error of thinking as well as of speaking, for it postulates a principle of justice outside of G.o.d which compels Him to act in a certain way. Of course there is no such principle. If there were it would be superior to G.o.d, for only a superior power can compel obedience.

The truth is that there is not and can never be anything outside of f the nature of G.o.d which can move Him in the least degree. All G.o.d's reasons come from within His uncreated being. Nothing has entered the being of G.o.d from eternity, nothing has been removed, and nothing has been changed.

Justice, when used of G.o.d, is a name we give to the way G.o.d is, nothing more; and when G.o.d acts justly He is not doing so to conform to an independent criterion, but simply acting like Himself in a given situation. As gold is an element in itself and can never change nor compromise but is gold wherever it is found, so G.o.d is G.o.d, always, only, fully G.o.d, and can never be other than He is. Everything in the universe is good to the degree it conforms to the nature of G.o.d and evil as it fails to do so. G.o.d is His own self-existent principle of moral equity, and when He sentences evil men or rewards the righteous, He simply acts like Himself from within, uninfluenced by anything that is not Himself.

All this seems, but only seems, to destroy the hope of justification for the returning sinner. The Christian philosopher and saint, Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, sought a solution to the apparent contradiction between the justice and the mercy of G.o.d. 'How dost Thou spare the wicked,' he inquired of G.o.d, 'if Thou art all just and supremely just?' Then he looked straight at G.o.d for the answer, for he knew that it lies in what G.o.d is.

Anselm's findings may be paraphrased this way: G.o.d's being is unitary; it is not composed of a number of parts working harmoniously, but simply one. There is nothing in His justice which forbids the exercise of His mercy. To think of G.o.d as we sometimes think of a court where a kindly judge, compelled by law sentences a man to death with tears and apologies, is to think in a manner wholly unworthy of the true G.o.d. G.o.d is never at cross-purposes with Himself. No attribute of G.o.d is in conflict with another.

G.o.d's compa.s.sion flows out of His goodness, and goodness without justice is not goodness. G.o.d spares us because He is good, but He could not be good if He were not just. When G.o.d punishes the wicked, Anselm concludes, it is just because it is consistent with their deserts; and when He spares the wicked it is just because it is compatible with His goodness; so G.o.d does what becomes Him as the supremely good G.o.d. This is reason seeking to understand, not that it may believe but because it already believes.

A simpler and more familiar solution for the problem of how G.o.d can be just and still justify the unjust is found in the Christian doctrine of redemption. It is that, through the work of Christ in atonement, justice is not violated but satisfied when G.o.d spares a sinner. Redemptive theology teaches that mercy does not become effective toward a man until justice has done its work. The just penalty for sin was exacted when Christ our Subst.i.tute died for us on the cross. However unpleasant this may sound to the ear of the natural man, it has ever been sweet to the ear of faith. Millions have been morally and spiritually transformed by this message, have lived lives of great moral power, and died at last peacefully trusting in it.

This message of justice discharged and mercy operative is more than a pleasant theological theory; it announces a fact made necessary by our deep human need. Because of our sin we are all under sentence of death, a judgment which resulted when justice confronted our moral situation. When infinite equity encountered our chronic and willful inequity, there was violent war between the two, a war which G.o.d won and must always win. But when the penitent sinner casts himself upon Christ for salvation, the moral situation is reversed. Justice confronts the changed situation and p.r.o.nounces the believing man just.

Thus justice actually goes over to the side of G.o.d's trusting children. This is the meaning of those daring words of the apostle John: 'If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' But G.o.d's justice stands forever against the sinner in utter severity. The vague and tenuous hope that G.o.d is too kind to punish the unG.o.dly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions. It hushes their fears and allows them to practice all pleasant forms of iniquity while death draws every day nearer and the command to repent goes unregarded. As responsible moral beings we dare not so trifle with our eternal future.

Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress; Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed, With joy shall I lift up my head.

Bold shall I stand in Thy great day; For who aught to my charge shall lay?

Fully absolved through these I am From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.

Count N. L. von Zinzendorf

Chapter 18.

The Mercy of G.o.d Holy Father, Thy wisdom excites our admiration, Thy power fills us with fear, Thy omnipresence turns every spot of earth into holy ground; but how shall we thank Thee enough for Thy mercy which comes down to the lowest part of our need to give us beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and for the spirit of heaviness a garment of praise?

We bless and magnify Thy mercy, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

When through the blood of the everlasting covenant we children of the shadows reach at last our home in the light, we shall have a thousand strings to our harps, but the sweetest may well be the one tuned to sound forth most perfectly the mercy of G.o.d.

For what right will we have to be there? Did we not by our sins take part in that unholy rebellion which rashly sought to dethrone the glorious King of creation? And did we not in times past walk according to the course of this world, according to the evil prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience? And did we not all at once live in the l.u.s.ts of our flesh? And were we not by nature the children of wrath, even as others?

But we who were one time enemies and alienated in our minds through wicked works shall then see G.o.d face to face and His name shall be in our foreheads. We who earned banishment shall enjoy communion; we who deserve the pains of h.e.l.l shall know the bliss of heaven. And all through the tender mercy of our G.o.d, whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited us.

When all Thy mercies, O my G.o.d, My rising soul surveys, Transported with the view, I'm lost In wonder, love, and praise.

Joseph Addison Mercy is an attribute of G.o.d, an infinite and inexhaustible energy within the divine nature which disposes G.o.d to be actively compa.s.sionate. Both the Old and the New Testaments proclaim the mercy of G.o.d, but the Old has more than four times as much to say about it as the New.

We should banish from our minds forever the common but erroneous notion that justice and judgment characterize the G.o.d of Israel, while mercy and grace belong to the Lord of the Church. Actually there is in principle no difference between the Old Testament and the New.

In the New Testament Scriptures there is a fuller development of redemptive truth, but one G.o.d speaks in both dispensations, and what He speaks agrees with what He is. Wherever and whenever G.o.d appears to men, He acts like Himself. Whether in the Garden of Eden or the Garden of Gethsemane, G.o.d is merciful as well as just.

He has always dealt in mercy with mankind and will always deal in justice when His mercy is despised. Thus He did in antediluvian times; thus when Christ walked among men; thus He is doing today and will continue always to do for no other reason than that He is G.o.d. If we could remember that the divine mercy is not a temporary mood but an attribute of G.o.d's eternal being, we would no longer fear that it will someday cease to be.

Mercy never began to be, but from eternity was; so it will never cease to be. It will never be more since it is itself infinite; and it will never be less because the infinite cannot suffer diminution. Nothing that has occurred or will occur in heaven or earth or h.e.l.l can change the tender mercies of our G.o.d. Forever His mercy stands, a boundless, overwhelming immensity of divine pity and compa.s.sion.

As judgment is G.o.d's justice confronting moral inequity, so mercy is the goodness of G.o.d confronting human suffering and guilt. Were there no guilt in the world, no pain and no tears, G.o.d would yet be infinitely merciful; but His mercy might well remain hidden in His heart, unknown to the created universe.

No voice would be raised to celebrate the mercy of which none felt the need. It is human misery and sin that call forth the divine mercy.

Kyrie eleison! Christe eleison!' the Church has pleaded through the centuries; but if I mistake not I hear in the voice of her pleading a note of sadness and despair. Her plaintive cry, so often repeated in that tone of resigned dejection, compels one to infer that she is praying for a boon she never actually expects to receive. She may go on dutifully to sing of the greatness of G.o.d and to recite the creed times beyond number, but her plea for mercy sounds like a forlorn hope and no more, as if mercy were a heavenly gift to be longed for but never really enjoyed.

Could our failure to capture the pure joy of mercy consciously experienced be the result of our unbelief or our ignorance, or both? It was so once in Israel. I bear them record,' Paul testified of Israel, that they have a zeal of G.o.d, but not according to knowledge.' They failed because there was at least one thing they did not know, one thing that would have made the difference.

And of Israel in the wilderness the Hebrew writer says, But the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.' To receive mercy we must first know that G.o.d is merciful. And it is not enough to believe that He once showed mercy to Noah or Abraham or David and will again show mercy in some happy future day. We must believe that G.o.d's mercy is boundless, free and, through Jesus Christ our Lord, available to us now in our present situation.

We may plead for mercy for a lifetime in unbelief, and at the end of our days be still no more than sadly hopeful that we shall somewhere, sometime, receive it. This is to starve to death just outside the banquet hall in which we have been warmly invited.

Or we may, if we will, lay hold on the mercy of G.o.d by faith, enter the hall, and sit down with the bold and avid souls who will not allow diffidence and unbelief to keep them from the feast of fat things prepared for them.

Arise, my soul, arise; Shake off thy guilty fears; The bleeding Sacrifice In my behalf appears: Before the throne my Surety stands, My name is written on His hands.

My G.o.d is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear: He owns me for His child; I can no longer fear: With confidence I now draw nigh, And Father, Abba, Father,' cry.

Charles Wesley

Chapter 19.

The Grace of G.o.d G.o.d of all grace, whose thoughts toward us are ever thoughts of peace and not of evil, give us hearts to believe that we are accepted in the Beloved; and give us minds to admire that perfection of moral wisdom which found a way to preserve the integrity of heaven and yet receive us there. We are astonished and marvel that one so holy and dread should invite us into Thy banqueting house and cause love to be the banner over us. We can not express the grat.i.tude we feel, but look Thou on our hearts and read it there.

Amen.

In G.o.d mercy and grace are one; but as they reach us they are seen as two, related but not identical.

As mercy is G.o.d's goodness confronting human misery and guilt, so grace is His goodness directed toward human debt and demerit. It is by His grace that G.o.d imputes merit where none previously existed and declares no debt to be where one had been before.

Grace is the good pleasure of G.o.d that inclines Him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who were before under just disapprobation. Its use to us sinful men is to save us and to make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of G.o.d's kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

We benefit eternally by G.o.d's being just what He is. Because He is what He is, He lifts up our heads out of the prison house, changes our prison garments for royal robes, and makes us to eat bread continually before Him all the days of our lives.

Grace takes its rise far back in the heart of G.o.d, in the awful and incomprehensible abyss of His holy being; but the channel through which it flows out to men is Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The apostle Paul, who beyond all others is the exponent of grace in redemption, never disa.s.sociates G.o.d's grace from G.o.d's crucified Son. Always in his teachings the two are found together, organically one and inseparable.

A full and fair summation of Paul's teaching on this subject is found in his Epistle to the Ephesians: 'Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, where in he hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.'

John also in the Gospel that bears his name identifies Christ as the medium through which grace reaches mankind: 'For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.'

But right here it is easy to miss the path and go far astray from the truth; and some have done this. They have compelled this verse to stand by itself, unrelated to other Scriptures bearing on the doctrine of grace, and have made it teach that Moses knew only law and Christ knows only grace. So the Old Testament is made to be a book of law and the New Testament a book of grace. The truth is quite otherwise.

The law was given to men through Moses, but it did not originate with Moses. It had existed in the heart of G.o.d from before the foundation of the world. On Mount Sinai it became the legal code for the nation of Israel; but the moral principles it embodies are eternal. There never was a time when the law did not represent the will of G.o.d for mankind nor a time when the violation of it did not bring its own penalty, though G.o.d was patient and sometimes 'winked' at wrongdoing because of the ignorance of the people. Paul's close-knit arguments in the third and fifth chapters of his Epistle to the Romans make this very clear.

The spring of Christian morality is the love of Christ, not the law of Moses; nevertheless there has been no abrogation of the principles of morality contained in the law. No privileged cla.s.s exists exempt from that righteousness which the law enjoins.

The Old Testament is indeed a book of law, but not of law only. Before the great flood Noah 'found grace in the eyes of the Lord,' and after the law was given G.o.d said to Moses, 'Thou hast found grace in my sight.' And how could it be otherwise? G.o.d will always be Himself, and grace is an attribute of His holy being. He can no more hide His grace than the sun can hide its brightness. Men may flee from the sunlight to dark and musty caves of the earth, but they cannot put out the sun. So men may in any dispensation despise the grace of G.o.d, but they cannot extinguish it.

Had the Old Testament times been times of stern, unbending law alone the whole complexion of the early world would have been vastly less cheerful than we find it to be in the ancient writings. There could have been no Abraham, friend of G.o.d; no David, man after G.o.d's own heart; no Samuel, no Isaiah, no Daniel. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews, that Westminster Abbey of the spiritually great of the Old Testament, would stand dark and tenantless. Grace made sainthood possible in Old Testament days just as it does today.

No one was ever saved other than by grace, from Abel to the present moment. Since mankind was banished from the eastward Garden, none has ever returned to the divine favor except through the sheer goodness of G.o.d. And wherever grace found any man it was always by Jesus Christ. Grace indeed came by Jesus Christ, hut it did not wait for His birth in the manger or His death on the cross before it became operative.

Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The first man in human history to be reinstated in the fellows.h.i.+p of G.o.d came through faith in Christ. In olden times men looked forward to Christ's redeeming work; in later times they gaze back upon it, but always they came and they come by grace, through faith.

We must keep in mind also that the grace of G.o.d is infinite and eternal. As it had no beginning, so it can have no end, and being an attribute of G.o.d, it is as boundless as infinitude.

Instead of straining to comprehend this as a theological truth, it would be better and simpler to compare G.o.d's grace with our need. We can never know the enormity of our sin, neither is it necessary that we should. What we can know is that 'where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.'

To 'abound' in sin: that is the worst and the most we could or can do. The word abound defines the limit of our finite abilities; and although we feel our iniquities rise over us like a mountain, the mountain, nevertheless, has definable boundaries: it is so large, so high, it weighs only this certain amount and no more. But who shall define the limitless grace of G.o.d? Its 'much more' plunges our thoughts into infinitude and confounds them there. All thanks be to G.o.d for grace abounding.

We who feel ourselves alienated from the fellows.h.i.+p of G.o.d can now raise our discouraged heads and look up. Through the virtues of Christ's atoning death the cause of our banishment has been removed. We may return as the Prodigal returned, and be welcome. As we approach the Garden, our home before the Fall, the flaming sword is withdrawn. The keepers of the tree of life stand aside when they see a son of grace approaching.

Return, O wanderer, now return, And seek thy Father's face; Those new desires which in thee burn Were kindled by His grace.

Return, O wanderer, now return, And wipe the falling tear: Thy Father calls, - no longer mourn; 'Tis love invites thee near William Benco Collyer

Chapter 20.

The Love of G.o.d Our Father which art in heaven, we Thy children are often troubled in mind, hearing within us at once the affirmations of faith and the accusations of conscience. We are sure that there is in us nothing that could attract the love of One as holy and as just as Thou art. Yet Thou hast declared Thine unchanging love for us in Christ Jesus. If nothing in us can win Thy love, nothing in the universe can prevent Thee from loving us.

Thy love is uncaused and undeserved. Thou art Thyself the reason for the love wherewith we are loved. Help us to believe the intensity, the eternity of the love that has found us. Then love will cast out fear; and our troubled hearts will be at peace, trusting not in what we are but in what Thou hast declared Thyself to be. Amen.

The apostle John, by the Spirit, wrote, G.o.d is love,' and some have taken his words to be a definitive statement concerning the essential nature of G.o.d. This is a great error. John was by those words stating a fact, hut he was not offering a definition.

Equating love with G.o.d is a major mistake which has produced much unsound religious philosophy and has brought forth a spate of vaporous poetry completely out of accord with the Holy Scriptures and altogether of another climate from that of historic Christianity.

Had the apostle declared that love is what G.o.d is, we would be forced to infer that G.o.d is what love is. If literally G.o.d is love, then literally love is G.o.d, and we are in all duty bound to wors.h.i.+p love as the only G.o.d there is. If love is equal to G.o.d then G.o.d is only equal to love, and G.o.d and love are identical. Thus we destroy the concept of personality in G.o.d and deny outright all His attributes save one, and that one we subst.i.tute for G.o.d.

The G.o.d we have left is not the G.o.d of Israel; He is not the G.o.d and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; He is not the G.o.d of the prophets and the apostles; He is not the G.o.d of the saints and reformers and martyrs, nor yet the G.o.d of the theologians and hymnists of the church.

For our souls' sake we must learn to understand the Scriptures. We must escape the slavery of words and give loyal adherence to meanings instead. Words should express ideas, not originate them. We say that G.o.d is love; we say that G.o.d is light; we say that Christ is truth; and we mean the words to be understood in much the same way that words are understood when we say of a man, He is kindness itself.' By so saying we are not stating that kindness and the man are identical, and no one understands our words in that sense.

The words G.o.d is love' mean that love is an essential attribute of G.o.d. Love is something true of G.o.d but it is not G.o.d. It expresses the way G.o.d is in His unitary being, as do the words holiness, justice, faithfulness and truth. Because G.o.d is immutable He always acts like Himself, and because He is a unity He never suspends one of His attributes in order to exercise another.

From G.o.d's other known attributes we may learn much about His love. We can know, for instance, that because G.o.d is self-existent, His love had no beginning; because He is eternal, His love can have no end; because He is infinite, it has no limit; because He is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity; because He is immense, His love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, sh.o.r.eless sea before which we kneel in joyful silence and from which the loftiest eloquence retreats confused and abashed.

Yet if we would know G.o.d and for other's sake tell what we know, we must try to speak of His love. All Christians have tried, but none has ever done it very well. I can no more do justice to that awesome and wonder-filled theme than a child can grasp a star. Still, by reaching toward the star the child may call attention to it and even indicate the direction one must look to see it. So, as I stretch my heart toward the high, s.h.i.+lling love of G.o.d, someone who has not before known about it may be encouraged to look up and have hope.

We do not know, and we may never know, what love is, but we can know how it manifests itself, and that is enough for us here. First we see it showing itself as good will. Love wills the good of all and never wills harm or evil to any. This explains the words of the apostle John: There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.'

Fear is the painful emotion that arises at the thought that we may be harmed or made to suffer. This fear persists while we are subject to the will of someone who does not desire our well-being. The moment we come under the protection of one of good will, fear is cast out. A child lost in a crowded store is full of fear because it sees the strangers around it as enemies. In its mother's arms a moment later all the terror subsides. The known good will of the mother casts out fear.

The world is full of enemies, and as long as we are subject to the possibility of harm from these enemies, fear is inevitable. The effort to conquer fear without removing the causes is altogether futile. The heart is wiser than the apostles of tranquillity. As long as we are in the hands of chance, as long as we look for hope to the law of averages, as long as we must trust for survival to our ability to outthink or outmaneuver the enemy, we have every good reason to be afraid. And fear hath torment.

To know that love is of G.o.d and to enter into the secret place leaning upon the arm of the Beloved - this and only this can cast out fear. Let a man become convinced that nothing can harm him and instantly for him all fear goes out of the universe. The nervous reflex, the natural revulsion to physical pain may be felt sometimes, but the deep torment of fear is gone forever.

G.o.d is love and G.o.d is sovereign. His love disposes Him to desire our everlasting welfare and His sovereignty enables Him to secure it. Nothing can hurt a good man.

The body they may kill: G.o.d's truth abideth still His kingdom is forever.

Martin Luther G.o.d's love tells us that He is friendly and His Word a.s.sures us that He is our friend and wants us to be His friends. No man with a trace of humility would first think that he is a friend of G.o.d; but the idea did not originate with men. Abraham would never have said, I am G.o.d's friend,' but G.o.d Himself said that Abraham was His friend. The disciples might well have hesitated to claim friends.h.i.+p with Christ, but Christ said to them, Ye re my friends.'

Modesty may demur at so rash a thought, but audacious faith dares to believe the Word and claim friends.h.i.+p with G.o.d. We do G.o.d more honor by believing what He has said about Himself and having the courage to come boldly to the throne of grace than by hiding in self-conscious humility among the trees of the garden.

Love is also an emotional identification. It considers nothing its own but gives all freely to the object of its affection. We see this constantly in our world of men and women. A young mother, thin and tired, nurses at her breast a plump and healthy baby, and far from complaining, the mother gazes down at her child with eyes s.h.i.+ning with happiness and pride. Acts of self-sacrifice are common to love. Christ said of Himself, Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'

It is a strange and beautiful eccentricity of the free G.o.d that He has allowed His heart to be emotionally identified with men. Self-sufficient as He is, He wants our love and will not be satisfied till He gets it. Free as He is, He has let His heart be bound to us forever. Herein is love, not that we loved G.o.d, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. For our soul is so specially loved of Him that is highest,' says Julian of Norwich, that it overpa.s.seth the knowing of all creatures: that is to say, there is no creature that is made that may know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Maker loveth us. And therefore we may with grace and His help stand in spiritual beholding, with everlasting marvel of this high, overpa.s.sing, inestimable Love that Almighty G.o.d hath to us of His Goodness.'

Another characteristic of love is that it takes pleasure in its object. G.o.d enjoys His creation. The apostle John says frankly that G.o.d's purpose in creation was His own pleasure. G.o.d is happy in His love for all that He has made. We cannot miss the feeling of pleasure in G.o.d's delighted references to His handiwork. Psalm 104 is a divinely inspired nature poem almost rhapsodic in its happiness, and the delight of G.o.d is felt throughout it.

The glory of the Lord shall endure forever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works.'

The Lord takes peculiar pleasure in His saints. Many think of G.o.d as far removed, gloomy and mightily displeased with everything, gazing down in a mood of fixed apathy upon a world in which He has long ago lost interest; but this is to think erroneously. True, G.o.d hates sin and can never look with pleasure upon iniquity, but where men seek to do G.o.d's will He responds in genuine affection.

Christ in His atonement has removed the bar to the divine fellows.h.i.+p. Now in Christ all believing souls are objects of G.o.d's delight. The Lord thy G.o.d 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.'

According to the Book of Job, G.o.d's work of creation was done to musical accompaniment. Where wast thou,' G.o.d asks, when I laid the foundations of the earth... when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of G.o.d shouted for joy?' John Dryden carried the idea a bit further than this, but not, perhaps, too far to be true: From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began: When nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms lay, And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high, Arise, ye more than dead!'

Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry, In order to their stations leap, And Music's power obey.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began: From harmony to harmony Through all the compa.s.s of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in Man.

From A Song for St. Cecilia's Day'

Music is both an expression and a source of pleasure, and the pleasure that is purest and nearest to G.o.d is the pleasure of love.

h.e.l.l is a place of no pleasure because there is no love there. Heaven is full of music because it is the place where the pleasures of holy love abound. Earth is the place where the pleasures of love are mixed with pain, for sin is here, and hate and ill will. In such a world as ours love must sometimes suffer, as Christ suffered in giving Himself for His own. But we have the certain promise that the causes of sorrow will finally be abolished and the new face enjoy forever a world of selfless, perfect love.

It is of the nature of love that it cannot lie quiescent. It is active, creative, and benign. G.o.d commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were sinners, Christ died for us.' G.o.d so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.' So it must be where love is; love must ever give to its own, whatever the cost. The apostles rebuked the young churches sharply because a few of their members had forgotten this and had allowed their love to spend itself in personal enjoyment while their brethren were in need. But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compa.s.sion from him, how dwelleth the love of G.o.d in him?' So wrote that John who has been known to the centuries as the Beloved.'

The love of G.o.d is one of the great realities of the universe, a pillar upon which the hope of the world rests. But it is a personal, intimate thing, too. G.o.d does not love populations, He loves people. He loves not ma.s.ses, but men. He loves us all with a mighty love that has no beginning and can have no end.