Imagine that this is the moment of the fall and that you are witnessing it. The temptation has succeeded. The crooked serpent, bearing aloft his vile crest, recoils in triumph to his secret lurking place. Angel messengers, horrified at man's reckless deed, fly away from the newly polluted bowers of bliss; while others, hearing the dread intelligence, poise themselves mid air on the wing. The flowers of paradise are fading, the leaves are withering, and its crystal cascades murmur with their burden of despair, while the man, poor fallen man, skulks among the bushes and like a baffled culprit, tries to hide himself among the trees of the garden. What next will happen? Shall man perish? Shall the ashes of the planet on which he dwells. be scattered through creation proving to unnumbered worlds the fruits of sin? Man cannot deliver himself and justice demands satisfaction. The honour of the divine law is at stake. The world trembles in the balance, oscillates between hope and despair. Justice cries for vengeance but Mercy prays that we may live. Which shall prevail? Who will come in and decide?

How fraught with destiny!

How awful is the moment?
The love and power of

Jehovah triumphs and man shall be saved. No sooner did Adam fall than in a moment, quick as the lightning's flash, God either suspended for awhile the claims of His ustice or else He struck out the great scheme of revelation at the same moment that struck out his part in the first covenant. Jesus said "Lo I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, oh God." Then divine justice was satisfied, God was reconciled to man and the world was free. "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.”

II. WE MUST CONSIDER REDEEMING LOVE IN ITS MANIFESTATION IN THE GIFT OF CHRIST.

We have a view of this love when we look at the person whom the Father gave. Suppose that there is in existence an angel who knows nothing of our world and nothing of redemption, suppose that we are now permitted to hold speech with him. Tell him of our world's depravity and rebellion, the aggravating circumstances under which it fell; speak of its utter insignificance when compared with the rest of the creation, tell of the ease with which the Almighty could create a thousand worlds better and brighter far than ours. Then ask this angel what will God give for the ransom of this fallen world? Astonishment would be his answer, wondering silence his only reply. The purpose to redeem is a thought too vast and too magnificent for any creature to conceive. The very idea of redemption is divine. Wonderous as it is to know that God has thought of saving man it is surpassing strange to learn that He has laid the foundations of our redemption in the blood of His Son. The title Son of God proclaims the dignity of its bearer. He is the brightness of His Father's glory and the express image of His person. Being the Son of God by an everlasting and mysterious generation He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. He is the second person in the ever-blessed and adorable Trinity co-equal, co-essential and co-eternal with the Father and the Holy Ghost. The relation which Jesus Christ as a Son sustains to the Father is an evidence of the amazing love which the Father manifested to the world when He gave His Son for its redemption. Christ Himself has taught us something of that mysterious relation and union. for He said, "I and my Father are one." One in essence, one in power, one in purpose, one in glory, one in eternity. The Father calls Christ His "well-beloved" and His "only begotten Son."

Look at the relation which Christ sustains towards the

universe. "All things were made by him, and for him, and without him was not any thing made that is made. For by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers." Christ is also the sustainer and preserver of all things for "By him all things consist.' Let Christ cease to maintain the universe and then creation shattered to its elements, mocks at all forms, maddens in confusion, a universal wreck.

When we consider the circumstances of our Saviour's life we have another illustration of the Father's love. With the exception of the honour and glory which the Redeemer has justly won by the perfect manner in which he executed the work of redemption, the history of the Messiahship is the history of sorrows, degradation, and shame. Rejected by the Jewish nation he became the object of scorn and derision to the world. So great and insupportable was his agony in the garden of Gethsemane that He sweat as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. On the cross we behold him sneered at, derided, forsaken, dying an accursed death for the sins of the world. The atonement and the atoning sufferings of Christ are finished, but still, at this very hour Jesus sympathizes with all His suffering people. "He knows what every member bears." "We have not an high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” Suffering Christian, thy Lord never forgets thee for a moment. He feels all thy sorrows, knows all thy tears, and puts them into His bottle. There is no Christian however mean and lowly that is despised by Christ. When the meanest disciple is unfaithful it grieves the Master and alas too many crucify the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame. Nothing but infinite love on the part of the Father could ever have induced Him to give His well

beloved Son to a life of suffering and a death of shame. The Father knew from the beginning that His Son would have to endure all the sufferings we have enumerated and far deeper agonies than we have the power to tell. He knew that His Son would be a derided outcast, mocked, sceptred with a reed and crowned with thorns; yet with all the pain and degradation in prospect, with Calvary in full view, the Father spared not His only-begotton Son but "freely gave Him up for us all.”

III. LET US CONSIDER REDEEMING LOVE-THE LOVE OF THE FATHER IN RELATION TO ITS DESIGN.

GREAT PRACTICAL

"That whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life." This part of the text teaches us that the Father's object in giving His Son was the conditional bestowment of blessings.

The destruction referred to in the text is not that utter ruin of our race that must have come to pass had God made no provision for our salvation. The atonement was made and therefore we still exist. The text has reference to the everlasting destruction of all those who die without a saving interest in the blood of Jesus Christ. They who believe in Jesus shall never perish. Their souls shall never be convulsed in the grasp of demons, neither shall they ever breathe the sulphurous atmosphere of the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone. They shall never be bound down to the infernal rocks by the chains of darkness and despair. The worm that never dies shall not gnaw in their bosoms. They shall never be scared and maddened by the scowls of Apollyon amid the horrors of the infernal shades. The yell of fallen angels and the shriek of lost spirits shall never ring through the believer's home. No fiend shall wound him with a poisoned dart, nor send him howling for ages along a fiery way. The believer

shall not perish. He shall escape the avenging of the divine displeasure. Had the Lord Jesus stopped here it would have been enough. Man would have been content to escape death. But our heavenly Father has provided for us something more than a negative salvation. Not only is there the negation of all evil to them that believe; all good is purchased for them and everlasting life is theirs. Not only has the Redeemer ransomed us from misery and death. He has procured for us a never ending life of happiness and joy. This glorious life is your's the moment you believe in Christ. Nothing but sin can ever destroy the Christian's spritual life. The chief reference of the text is to everlasting life in heaven as contrasted with everlasting and accursed existence in perdition. The Bible has told us much about heaven but it has not told us all. Man may know much about heaven but he cannot possibly know all. As it is written, "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the abundant things which God hath prepared for them that love him." Man has no capacity for any thing greater or more blessed than everlasting life, and unless his present capacities were altered a greater blessing would have been completely thrown away upon him. Suffice it therefore to say that everlasting life is all that man can want and all that heaven can give.

Some who have made great pretensions to philosophy, and others who have made no pretensions to profound wisdom, have objected to faith as the condition on which this everlasting life is suspended, on the ground of its peculiar simplicity. But by suspending our salvation on the simple condition of faith God has manifested His infinite wisdom and boundless love. Faith in Christ as the condition of salvation, is the greatest evidence of divine compassion that could have been given in the case, because it