SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 April 1921, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

.. “GOD IS LOVE.” •-I. Saint John, IV. 8. (Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) Imagine that by some vast cosmic calam every copy of Holy Scripture was suddenly destroyed, and every trace of its teaching blotted from the mind of man. Imagine the world bereft of every ray of spiritual light and hope, on the dim past, the palpitating present, and the misty future. Duty and destiny, God and man, time and eternity, are subject’s on which we are left with no guidance from the eternal. Imagine, further, that as you wander amid the ruined hopes and aspirations of the world, you chance to light upon a charred and blackened fragment of this Epistle of Saint-John. It is a stray leaf of the fourth chapter of the first epistle, but th* only legible words are these two: “God -is —But what God is not decipherable? You try to recall the missing word, the vanished idea, but they have passed into oblivion. In your perplexity you turn for help to the pillared universe, the bright and joyous stars, those happy islands whose shores are traced out in the ocean of the heavens, and ta*king into account of these you add the word “mighty.” God is mighty, or, reading off the tablet of a guilty memory, you supply the missing word and say “God is just,” or yet again, taking your impression from heathen mythologies, you say “God is wrathful,” for Jupiter and Jove were, vengefql, and Siva, whom thousands worshipped, was the incarnation of lust and cruelty. A UNIQUE SENTENCE. But apart from a Divine revelation, would you ever have dreamed that the lost word was this “king of words,” love? “God is love.” The improbability is seen in the fact that no such conception has ever visited any people apart from the Bible. “God is love” is a unique sentence, descriptive of the .God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and stands in vivid contrast with the gods of the Greeks and Romans, the Persians and the Egyptians. The conception is original and unique. It is not a discovery, but a revelation; not the creation of human intelligence, but the fruit of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost; and this definition of God is fuller, truer, completer, than any other. The words occur nowhere else in the sacred writings, but they sum up in three monosyllables all the Bible has to teach about God, and all that Jesus ever revealed. Christ came to make God known, to express God’s thoughts, relations, purposes. Jesus Christ’s whole life was one continuous unfolding of the mind and heart of God to men. The doctrine of God, taught by others, by priests and prophets, by historians and poets, is to be tested by what Jesus said, and His doctrine .of God is summed up in Saint John’s three words, “God is love.” What by parable and miracle, by sermon and wayside speech, by life and death, is cdhdensed into these shining words “God is love?” Not only does God love the whole round world, and every creature, but God is, and ever is, pre-eminently and supremely, from the burning centre to the circumference of His eternal Being, love. Search the depths of Gnd’s holy nature, find the pure, primal fount of His being, doing, suffering, and the red ripe heart is love. Creation the expression of love’s power, Providence is the expression of love’s wisdom, redemption is the expression of love’s patience and passion, time is the expression of love’s variety, and eternity, with all its ydars, is the expression of love’s everlasting'ness. THE PURE THING.

Take a school globe, and, following the proper order, lay on it bands of color, so as to include all the hues of the rainbow, then set the globe spinning rapidly on its axis, and the blues, and green, the yellows, and reds, will vanish, and the spinning sphere will change to pure white, supplying proof of the optical law that, blended, all colors of the spectroscope make white. So in the perfect harmony of the attributes of God you have love. The Westminster Assembly catechism says: “God is spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.” It is a noble and comprehensive statement, in spite of its omissions, but Saint John states the same truth more concisely, for as all the colors blended make white, so. all the attributes of the Godhead make love, holy love. Because “God is Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, truth.” “God is love.” When we seek confirmation of this truth we turn to “the bright and vast creation,” and this is a true instinct. For “the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” Even the untutored savage feels that dimly, as he watches the seasons, the wealth and wonder of the world. Still more do they who dwell in lands redeemed from the wilderness, and made fruitful in comfort and blessing. Not an insect that hums in summer air, not a blade of wayside grass, not a worm that crawls in the dust, but bears the mark of Divine beneficence equallv with the planets that roll m splendor under the eye of God. God hath made nothing worth}’ of contempt; The smallest pebble in the well of truth Has its peculiar meaning, and will stand When man's best monuments have passed away. ‘‘The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercy is over all His works.”

But oh I the exceeding grace Of highest God that loves His creatures so, And all His works with mercy doth embrace.

For toe choicest of God’s gifts are the most abundant, and the most widely diffused. The soft, elastic air, bright pellucid streams, light and heat, corn and cattle, toil that contributes to health, and health that ministers to happiness, are they not evidence of “design,” as Archbishop Butler would say. Yes, and merciful design. Nor should it be forgotten that God’s love is seen in the connection between virtue and happiness, between vice and suffering. “The way of transgressors is hard,” and love has made it so. “Whoso breaketh through a hedge, a serpent shall bite him,” is a provision of Divine mercy. We rave, we wrestle 'gainst great Nature’s plan, We thwart the Deity, decreed Who thwarts His will shall contradict his own. THE CHOICEST OF GOD’S GIFTS. This is also the law of love. I am not unmindful of the tragic side of human life —the pain, the anguish, the graves, of “Nature red in tooth and claw.” A German critic said, “If God made the world, I should not like to be | God; its woes would break my heart.”j Ah! he forgot that, the world’s woes did break God’s heart, at the place called Calvary. But true love is not sentimen-j talism. Love can be stern. Love can

wound to be kind. Love can say “No” to the plea of weakness. There lies the difference between human indulgence and Divine mercy. We sometimes ruin our children in the name of a Weak and puny thing miscalled love. A lad’s native indolence cries out against hard study apd wise drill. “Poor, overtaxed boy!” says his mother, “I must not allow it,” and the lad grows up with flabby mind and undisciplined will!” ‘‘Our girls must move in good society,” says the over-fond father; “the Puritans were too strict. We must relax their foolish rules.” So the girls have their fling in the name of a soft, mushy thing called loVe. Not so is it in tl e family of “our Father.” He loves wisely enough to rule. In Doulton’s London porcelain works there is an exquisite illustration of Dante’s dream of his beloved Beatrice. The pose is perfect, the coloring is marvellous. Ask the artist his secret, and he tell you the piece had to be fired three times to get, the perfection. The Divine Artist has His furnace, and He will not •Shrink from using the lambent flame to secure His end. Heated hot in burning fears. And bathed in baths of hissing tears. And battered by the stroke of doom To shape and use. What shall we say to such things? GOD’S THRONE. “Judge not the Lord by feeble sense.” What does the fly on the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral know about Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece? Just about as much as you or I know of God’s great design. Aleanwhile it is clear gain to be assured that the greatest Power in the universe is friendly. God’s throne is mercy, not marble. And what of Love’s crowning proof ? “In this was manifest the love of God towards us, because God sent His Son into the world that we might live through Him.” Words so thrilling in their , simple sublimity beggar speech. Do you know Browning’s poem called “One Word More.” The poet loved his wife with pure abandon. No word he coined could utter his hearty He speaks of learning music and seulptory to express his love, and then writes “One Word Alore.” God must express Himself. Nature does it gloriously. But Job’s words might well be the motto of every text book of science. “Lb! these are but the outskirts of His ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of Him.” Stand out under the stars to-night, and if you have a touch of poetry, you will sing, and if you are not a poet, you can worship. Count them of foam on the tideless sea, flowing past the feet of God. Read the Bibles of the Nations. Read Mahomet, Gautama, and Moses, for each has a Gospel for somebody. But Jesus Christ came! Calvary came! This is God; this is the solution of the problem; this is God’s “one word more.” God has told His heart at last! Pardon, light, hope, life, for all the world, the break of an Eternal Day. I see God bearing the sins of the world; I see Jesus bowing His head under the awful. shame! 1 protest against it; I hate the sight; it is dreadful; it is an ugly sight. Hush! The Cross is a symbol of Love’s perfect triumph. It was love that did that; and “God is Spirit.” “God is Light.” “God is Love.”