"The preaching of religion from the standpoint of fear is the shortest mode, is the easiest method, if quantity of thought is considered; for it is only necessary to breathe familiar anathemas over all the sinful race of men. It is a larger and more difficult work to trace out the application of the Gospel to all the details of human life,— to politics, to home, to childhood, middle life and old age. To gather up the rationalism of Christianity; its spiritualism and its humanity, to unfold its Jesus Christ, its Holy Spirit, its faith, hope and charity, to develop its infinite riches of thought and feeling, is a hard, long task compared with the authoritative announcement of infinite sorrow to almost the whole human race. But let us all rejoice that the age demands of us all, pulpit and pew, the longer and more thoughtful method of proclaiming the manifold riches of Christianity."-David Swing. A Greylock Pulpit. THE LOVE OF GOD. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting (R. V., eternal) life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn (R. V., judge) the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. John 3: 16, 17. Is there anything new in the New Testament, and if so, what is it? In a world of pain and passion, greed, graveyards, and abounding judgment, it is not strange that inquiries are made for some intelligence from the skies. The claim of a sane man that such word has arrived will be carefully sifted. Let us try to get an inside view of the claim made in this passage of Scripture, not assuming more than time compels, and trying to scale the text as we would a mountain. As the claim lies before us in large outline, the world has a revelation of God. Man needs rescue, called spiritual life, which would not be obtained without this revelation. The salvation is one that actuully saves the world. The love of God, which is the great motor to secure the needed changes in the world, is of such a sort as to reverse without weakness and laxity the emphasis of the world on judgment and mercy. "For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." On the side of the world how does the case stand? To the Jews, and at first even to the apostles, there appeared only a little larger disclosure of the love of God. The acquaintance was opening well. There was no fault to be found with the introduction. It was no more than that which Jesus "began to do and teach." Enthusiasm soon developed. It became steady under the pressure of deeper and higher sources, as it forgot the loaves and fishes and saw the truth in its own transparent worth, declaring, "Lo, now speakest thou plainly and speakest no proverb.” It is very easy to miss the perspective and real contrast between the foreground of the New Testament and the background of the Old Testament. Some theologians have so far confounded man's immaturity with the Gospel claim itself, as to boldly assert that the New Testament only reveals a little more of the love of God than the Old Testament does. They are wont to read new meanings into old words. They forget that the same word may be like a standard measure, full, half full, or scarcely used at all. In considering the whole Old Testament period we do well to remember, that the prophets were comparatively few and far apart. That even as regards the letter there are but few passages which are good paraphrases of the New Testament. The best that Divine inspiration could do for the moral genius was to give him a feeble forecast. His main work was not to predict, but to teach. To appreciate the Gospel, we need to know the Jehovah of the Old Testament, not as the God of a tribe, but as the controller of Nature, the personality of power behind and in all phenomena. It is natural that man should fear God before loving Him. If, however, we desire to murder both the Gospel and the Bible, so far as we are personally concerned, we have but to practically live as if under the dispensation of the law, to lose enthusiasm for the distinctive features of the Kingdom. We can fall below even people of the old order by facing the past instead of the future. We can deny that word of Christ that the least in the Kingdom is greater than the last and greatest of the prophets. Still another class object to the method of an admitted progress. They assert that men make their own gods, and that Jehovah, the Word made flesh, or "the only begotten Son," form no exceptions to the rule. They will not allow God to elect His own process of revelation. Why not turn this idea around and say that the most rational and Divine method is one which compels man to make his God? What God can be so trustworthy. so beloved as the one who personifies our best experiences? Let us see whether the facts of history lead up naturally to the announcement of the text. Savage man is first a hunter. He respects brute force, and is scarcely above its plane. Samson is the ideal ruler. The amazon is the ideal woman. God is power in many forms. The lion and the wolf are deified. Animals are domesticated. They come willingly under man's ascendancy. Man is their shepherd and learns from his occupation that God is his shepherd. He becomes still less a wanderer, when he gains a fixed habitation, and tills the soil. God is revealed more fully in him as the great care-taker. Fine arts follow the useful in his home, and beauty is associated with God. Holiness henceforth is something beautiful. The treasures increase and demand protection. The people call for a king and get one. They carry up this patriotism by imagination and God is a king. Fostered thus, the home develops as the rarest of all products. In it we find the gradually perfecting mirror which is selected by the Saviour himself as the best reflector of the character of God. Does not the discovery of this method magnify God to us, and prepare us to enter into a better understanding of His Fatherhood? That our salvation has been thus worked out, at first with fear and trembling, and at last with joy, makes it more evidently Divine. Revelation is thus seen to be a vital, not a mechanical process. The pure in heart see God. The home where love reigns sees Him. To love, is to be in the Kingdom. The spiritual vision strengthens and widens, beginning with man because he is embodied, but ending with God. We learn to see by first locating objects of striking color, and later those more beautiful. We love our neighbor, and then find how to transfer our regard to higher qualities in God, Since the Lord's plan was not to declare his nature and office, but simply to live, let us attempt to discover in that life the nature of the love which is the world's Gospel. Passing his general regard for man, which all men recognize, the question is, what is the precise quality of that love which arouses enthusiasm in men? The Divine emphasis and proportion of goodness and severity are no accident or error. Manifestly his conduct is never without sympathy, however severe. He speaks with authority, but not as the scribes, because his rebukes were as sympathetic as his tenderThe common people heard him gladly, because he was no respecter of persons, and his indignation never passed into vengeance. He never made any effort to make penalty match the crime. He was angry, but it was the anger of sorrow. Men often enjoy the taste of a sharp word. They baptize it and call it justice. This was impossible to Christ. Men suppose the fact of ill desert to be sufficient charter for all kinds of starchamber judgments. Christ was never tempted in this way. ness. One sure way to step down from the christian to a merely religious life, is to claim that gentleness and severity are so much a question of personal need and circumstance that no inference can be drawn from this great theme as to which is primary and which is secondary. This enables one to run into a hiding-place, claiming a heart of sympathy, while calling attention to legal wares which break as they fall, disclosing a disposition to remember a grudge, and to give somebody something quite as good as was sent. “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth," is the principle, even when no members of the body suffer violence. The Master did not escape the charge of being lax, soft, and a trifler with moral distinctions. Wherever he went the hounds were after him. They came to him with the woman taken in adultery. They took notes on his presence at Matthew's feast, when he was inaugurating work among the publicans. They met him at the house of Simon. They hated him because he loved folks more than ideas and customs. He was not enough of a judge and executioner to please them. one How, then, shall we learn the christian proportions of goodness and severity? One way is to read the Gospels. Go read without stopping, on of the Gospels. You will soon come back and say that the general trend of the book represents God as a physician, protector, teacher, shepherd, deliverer, and friend—also, under rare and special circumstances, as judge and vindicator of the oppressed. His justice is mercy in another form, employed only when absolutely necessary. "There is a kindness in it which is more than liberty." God is thus taken down from that throne, which has been so hard to approach, and from that self-centered condition which it has been so impossible to please. Burnt offerings and sacrifices have no longer any idol. No one but a priest could represent even Moses as personally in love with the priestly system, unless some other prophet can be found who wrote the account in the thirty-fourth chapter of Exodus. There |