greater everlasting moral qualities. What a God is He! How much higher are His ethical ways than ours! How our thoughts of God as a great governor and functionary belie and belittle Him. Note further, we have this message from a man who was living among alien masters in a state of serfdom, about seven hundred years before the birth of Christ. He declares a new not an old truth to Israel. God, he says, is transcendent enough, but in qualities which you have made subordinate. You are captives, but your greatest captivity is not due to your fewness or weakness among the powers of the earth, but to your sins. Every thirsty soul can drink. Every poor man can be rich. He can eat without money and drink without price.

Pass on now to the life and teachings of Jesus. Was the word of the prophet vindicated by the Christ? In what is God transcendent? Does the light from Calvary tell us that God is more awful, more distant, more unfeeling. more jealous of prerogative? We have certain ways and thoughts. To these we give varied emphasis. We have historically put the stress on fear, wrath, punishment. Jesus tells us that we must not only reverse that emphasis, but that we must transform and give new birth to our whole nature. God's ways are not as our ways. His tidings come to us as joyful news. They convert the soul. They turn the world up-side-down. God has power, but He does not use it as our great ones exercise authority. Jesus has authority, but He does not have that kind of ecclesiastical or official authority, which goes with an office or a throne. God has a Kingdom, but it is within us, not without. He does not have to use infinite power and knowledge as some Pharaoh or some Asiatic ruler. He is as far from the ideas of God built on a monarchical model, following human governments, as the Heavens are high above the earth. All that we can say of most human governments is, that they are but barely better than no government at all. Yet for thousands of years, yes to-day in many institutions of learning, the character of God is built on our radically erring notions of public policy and government. It was inevitable that we should have taken some of our early crude conceptions of God from so central and controling a force as the state. Saul must be king, because there were not enough men like Samuel at that time to maintain a better government. Since we must have kings, the New Testament enjoins that we “honor" them. Israel may well be happy if she has a good king. Good things will grow and enjoy at least a temporary freedom. The happiest associates and ideals will cluster about a good king. It is possible to pour perfume on the word king, so that we no longer discern its low-born limitations. We transform the word. It gains a figurative use. We still use the words king and priest, but both words have changed meaning, because men and states have changed. The old king and the old-time priest have passed. Our ideas of God's love to-day are drawn from the deeper well of the home life. The purer, sweeter, nobler the life of the family circle is, the higher will be our idea of God as a Father. Anything which weakens the witness of the home to the power of love, weakens our conception of God. National governments are more imposing and worldly than family

government. The hand of the law must be strongly laid on the lawbreaker. In a world of sin, love dealing with low natures, must employ the low motive of fear in self-defense, but this is not a fundamental and essential quality of love. It is a situation of expediency forced upon love by its opposite. It is not an accident or choice, but a temporary necessity. Even the best homes do not move on ideal lines. Their ways are not God's ways. Their thoughts are not God's thoughts. God transcends them. This, however, the world has learned, God is best mirrored in the home. The home life, to be sure, does not revolve as noiselessly and easily as the spheres, but it is as much better than the best constitutional government, not to mention absolute monarchies, as the best modern French plate mirror is better than the old polished metalic mirror of the middle ages. This was Jesus' great teaching, God is a Father. They who do the will of God, the same are my brother and sister and mother. The glory of the Kingdom, was not the glory of Solomon, but one greater than he. It was the Glory of Fatherhood. The power of the Supreme One was the power of the Father. The Kingdom to come, was the royalty of Fatherhood. The will to be done was a Father's will. The earth was to be conquered, so that society would come to a Heavenly perfection. The conquest began in the home. Parents, after allowing for evil, know how to give good gifts to their children. God is a perfect parent. Christ is the bridegroom; those who love him are the bride. Christ is the elder brother. His victory and cheer are our own. God is Father of all, of even the Pharisees who would not rejoice at the prodigal's return. Around the closing days of our Lord's life are associated the worst elements of humanity. Cruelty, bigotry, passion, pride, blood-thirsty vengeance, surged and foamed about the foot of the cross, dashing in violent anger like the sea upon some giant granite rock. But, “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end." These men who leer, and sneer and swear and gamble and refine their cruelties, and wag their heads with scorn, they are all brethren, younger brethren of the victim. Does He say, "I will get even with them for this if it takes a million years"? Some of us might. Does He say, "I will ignore them when I come into my Kingdom"? Does He know any transcendent power with sterner habit of disposition, whom He will now of all times in the universe, invoke, now call to His aid? It is, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

Again, consider what this spirit of love really is, in its influence through Jesus upon men. John once proposed to call down fire from Heaven, because the Samaritans did not invite their party to dine. He was not a man gentle by disposition and easy going, but was known with his brother as inheriting a tempestuous and thunderous disposition. The man who could stand still at the cross and receive the parting counsel of Jesus had begun to learn self-mastery by leaning on the bosom of love.

The apostle Paul had surpassed his compeers in zeal for the law of Moses. He had haled men and women for prison and for the horrors of

persecution. Now he has so given his heart to God's service, the transcendent service of love, that he counts it unspeakable joy to be the slave of Christ. The sort of work the love of God did, when shed abroad in Paul's heart, reveals to us what love is in itself. We see Paul's good works, like a city set on a hill, and intelligently glorify their source, the Father in heaven, the transcendent Father. God's thoughts have become Paul's thoughts.

Peter, the fickle, the impulsive, is one who sprang up quickly, but because there was a shallow soil, withered before the first blaze of heat. Love transforms him, renders him strenuous, rock like. He was converted many times. The first voluntary adhesion to Christ does not seem to have been a very difficult commitment for Peter to make. Perhaps it was easier for him to assent than dissent. Such instances are numerous now. Peter was to pass through a scorching fire of temptations too much for him, before he could say with every faculty obedient, Lord thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I have more than an affection for thee, thou knowest that I love thee with all my soul. The ways of Jesus became at last the ways of Peter.

All true love is Divine, in quality, in origin, in power. It is the degree of it, which distinguishes star from star in spiritual glory. Ever so little of real love, like small amounts of hercules powder, has great power to lift mountains of hate and level the rough places of pride. There is nothing like it. It has counterfeits, but no substitute. Accept a faithful paraphrase of a passage in the Sermon on the Mount. If thou comest to church, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, do not put your offering in the bags or plates which the deacons pass, thinking that God regards one dollar as valuable to Him as another, but ask the deacon to keep the money in a place apart, until you do what you can to heal the difficulty. Then come and tell him to give the money to the treasurer. Worship is never a substitute for love. Righteousness must exceed that fatal and long-cherished plan of assuaging conscience by the effect of observances and works upon the God's thoughts and ways are not in this matter as our thoughts

senses.

and ways.

Love then is the end of all our hope, the object of our faith. Nothing can separate a true lover from love, if he is trained in its high worth. It matters not whether it be God's love for us or our love for God, let real love once become the soul's strong habit, and nothing is more certain to stand. It is not a resolution, though it resolves. It is not a choice, though it can choose. It is not an emotion, though it can feel. It is not an admiration, though it can admire and adore. Love is an all-sided fruit of the Spirit. It means the whole man developed. It is not some single attribute which he has. It is the man. It is the whole habit, carriage, character, personality. There are, let us say, forty or fifty distinct faculties in a man, all involving the whole mind working as a unit, but only a part of the mind working at a special moment, as the present object of its action. Love is the development of all these faculties so that they do their best, both in their harmony with each

other, and in their combined effect for good in the working out of each specialty.

Metaphysicians and theologians have, as a rule, no love for campmeeting Christianity. The warm-hearted class-leader looks with suspicion upon the scholar and student: The man of feeling is apt to say more than twice, Lord thou knowest that I have an affection for thee; the man of intellect is apt to say more than twice, Lord thou knowest that I have an admiration for thee; before either will espouse a love that commits them to a change of conduct or purpose in life. Even after they make a beginning of Christian living, they will only discover how the best men lack breadth and balance. The man of books plans an extension of his library, forgetting the spontaneous joy of the heart which demands personal contact with men and the crucifixion of the pride of knowledge. Any man who pursues his calling with a purpose to make his knowledge or art serve the welfare of men, is, as a rule, in more danger from humiliation than from pride. It is the man who wants to be praised for his learning, or believes in art for art's sake, who distrusts filial devotion. Philosophy can descend to the state of a mummy. Love can be regarded as a moonshiny sentiment. But this is not the way or thought of God.

True love rings all the sweet chimes of ideality. It is full of purpose, full of affection, full of thought. It is deep, sweet, round, resonant, melodious, like the bells of Antwerp. The single sounds are pure, quiyering on the air, charming the ear of the stranger long into the night. When some Master plays them and the harmony of tones reveals their power of association, we have a parable of the soul attuned with itself, with men, with nature, with God. Jesus was so attuned. Jesus was Divine. His ways are not as ours. Jesus was human. His ways are as ours. The Kingdom of His love is to come on earth as it is in Heaven.