the boundless prospect lost. As His love comes down to us from eternity and touches the shores of time, where we stand, let us make the prayer of the Apostle Paul for the Ephesian Christians our own: That He would grant us that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith; that we, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that we might be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians iii. 16-19.)

We may learn more of that love; but we cannot know it fully. We might as well expect to know God Himself fully, and to find out God unto perfection, for God is Love. Therefore, to know and measure and comprehend His love is to know God Himself.

Let us walk with Moses and hear him say, "The Lord did not set His love upon you, nor choose you because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people; but because the Lord loved you and because He would keep the oath which He had sworn unto your fathers hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt." (Deut. vii. 7-9.) So are we delivered from a worse than Egyptian bondage.

Hear, also, the sweet Psalmist of Israel and the Spouse in the song of Solomon praising the love of Christ to his church. Hear the Saviour telling Nicodemus, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John iii. 16.) And in this epistle, and especially in this chapter, does the loving Apostle John, in the rich experience of his mature years, discourse concerning the love of God, and in the verse preceding the text declares: "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him." And "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

We may attempt by human standards to measure the love of God, but they all are inadequate.

Parents lay up for their children. They provide food, raiment, shelter, medicine in time of sickness, education for the mind. Children have no adequate conception of their obligations to their parents. They cannot appreciate the extent, the tenderness, and the endurance of parental love. God's love is compared to that of a parent, but it is much more.

Human love bestows rich gifts upon the objects of affection. Hence, presents are made from friend to friend, and from relative to relative. Sometimes the costliness or value of the gift may be regarded as an index or measure of affection. When strong affection is united with. pecuniary ability, nothing is too costly. The liberal offerings of the people of Israel for the erection of the tabernacle, and the magnificent gifts of David and his princes for the erection of the temple manifested their zeal and love for the service and worship of God. They could not do too much.

Long forbearance or long suffering and patience under provocation and injury afford remarkable evidence of the power of love. Readiness to forgive is an additional characteristic.

Illustrations of these virtues are seen when the prodigal son, returning to his father's house, finds that father running to meet him and ready both to forgive and to forget the past.

Equal, if not stronger, evidence of the power of love is often given by the wife who still clings to an unkind, unworthy, and perhaps unfaithful husband-when she strives to conceal his faults from others, and seems blind to them herself; when she hopes almost against hope for his reformation, and never ceases to pray for his salvation, and forsakes all others for him. By the love which belongs to the married relation did the Apostle illustrate Christ's love when he said: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it." (Eph. v. 25.)

Human love toils, labors, endures self-denial for the object of affection. It is recorded of the patriarch Jacob how, in early life, he contracted with Laban to serve him seven years for his younger daughter, Rachel. And he served the seven years, and they seemed unto him but a few days for the love he had to her. (Gen. xxix. 18.)

In yet another way is love manifested, even by risks, by great sacrifices, and sometimes by the surrender or loss of life.

When Paul, in self-vindication, recites some of his hardships and suffering, by stripes, by rods, by stoning, by shipwreck, by manifold perils, by hunger and thirst (2 Cor. xi. 23), we ask the cause, and we fail to understand the character of the man unless we admit that he was actuated by love to Jesus, who loved him and gave Himself for his redemption.

Tested by all these marks, meted by all these measures, compared with all human standards, God's love transcends them all in the bestowal of useful and needful gifts, even the most costly; in long patience and forgiveness, and in toils, sacrifices, and death in the person of Him "who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And, being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.' (Phil. ii. 6-8.)

Our text calls us to a more particular and definite view of the love of God. The special subject is the love of God as exhibited and enhanced by these three facts or truths:

1. He loved us before we loved Him.

2. He loved us when we were alienated from Him. 3. He has manifested that love by the greatest possible

gift.

To these let us turn our attention.

I. He loved us before we loved Him, and before we were individually conscious of our need-before we came

into existence. More than eighteen hundred years have elapsed since the scene of the crucifixion. That scene was not the beginning. It was rather the completion, or fulfillment, of the plan of love. Trace back the evidence of the design through prophets and patriarchs and hear the promise to Abraham: In thee shall all the families or the nations of the earth be blessed. Go further back to our first parents, and hear the prediction of perpetual enmity between the serpent and the seed of the woman, and that the head of the serpent shall be bruised or crushed. This was not the commencement, because known unto God are all His works from the beginning. To Him there is nothing new. He foreknew the entrance of sin into our world before its creation, and He foreknew the fall of man before the existence of man. Therefore, His purpose to redeem and save must have been coeval with his foreknowledge of the need of redemption. "For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren." (Rom. viii. 29.)

If one of our ancestors whom we had not personally known had, by a written will, conveyed to us a rich inheritance, or if a distant king should provide for our adoption into his family, make us one of his heirs, bestow upon us a princely title and a royal revenue, our first feelings upon the reception of the intelligence would be amazement at such condescension and wonder as to the cause which could prompt such generous gifts; and these feelings would naturally be succeeded by an overflow of gratitude and love.

If, now, we have the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, "Abba, Father," let us with Paul bless and praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will (Eph. i. 3-5).

Therefore God from eternity adopted us to be His children.

It is difficult for our fallen nature to love those who hate us. It is equally difficult for even our fallen nature not to love those who love us. Love begets or awakens love. Often love has softened and subdued the stony heart which nothing else could conquer. Can we now remain unmoved before the evidence of God's amazing love? We cannot boast of our love to Him. Not that we loved Him, but rejoice in His love to us, and say as in the nineteenth verse of this same chapter: "We love Him because He first loved us.' It was then, according to our text and all Scripture, an eternal, electing love which called us unto adoption and salvation.

Can we believe this and not by consequence love Him more?

II. The second truth of the text which magnifies the love of God is that He loved us when we were alienated from Him. Such was unmerited love. Among imperfect men, as social beings, strong and lifelong friendships are formed, like that of Jonathan and David, when one loved the other as his own soul. Such attachments are often founded upon a mutual agreement, or harmony of views, feelings, tastes, interests, purposes, and plans. No such hypothesis will account for the love between man and his Maker, or of God to man. The facts are widely different. The text says, "Herein is love, not that we loved God." Equivalent to saying we did not love God, but He loved us. He first loved, that is, before we loved. Before, or previously, while He loved us, we hated Him. It was first a discovery of His love to us which did much to take away our hatred to Him. "The carnal mind is enmity against God." (Rom. viii. 7.) Our natural condition is one of positive hate-hostility to Him and His love. Every one is conscious that such was our state of alienation. How hard (humanly speaking) it was for God to love us under such circumstances! If He loved us notwithstanding this great obstacle, how must this fact magnify and glorify the love of God in our es