August 25

We have known and believed the love God hath toward us. - 1 John 4:16.

This is the language of all those in whose hearts the love of God hath been shed abroad, who have been made to differ from those whose hearts are at enmity with God. These are blessed with “all spiritual blessings in heavenly places with Christ,” and are made willing to stand forth and declare-

“-to sinners round,

What a dear Saviour they have found.”

Thus, as God’s witnesses, they gratefully and practically testify of the love God hath towards them. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and hath sent his Son to be the propitiation of our sins.” They are ready to say: "Ah, he found me under the curse of the law, a wanderer from himself, yea, in rebellion against him, and he spared me; he fed me, he clothed me, he called me by his grace; he has forgiven all my trespasses as if they had never been committed; he has admitted me into his house and into his family, and he holds communion with me now; and I walk with God, I lean upon his arm, and I am waiting for the “manifestation of the sons of God,” when “that which is in part shall be done away,” and I shall be “presented faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.”

Yes, “God is love,” and if there were no other proof in the universe, I am the everlasting monument of this truth. I am a monument of this truth, inscribed TO THE GLORY OF GOD. And what then will it be when this acknowledgment comes, not from an individual, but from myriads-from all the redeemed, from all the sanctified? And even then the exemplification of the subject will not be absolutely complete; it will be always growing, for ever and ever it will be growing, in the evidence “God is love.”

“Glory be to him who gave us,

Freely gave his Son to save us,

Glory to the Son who came,

Honour, blessing, adoration,

Glory from the whole creation,

Be to God and to the Lamb.”