special love; he loved him as the being whose nature the only begotten Son would take upon Him, uniting the manhood with the Godhead in the person of Christ. He loved each man with the same love wherewith He loved the first man-Adam, “which was the son of God" (Luke iii. 38). "I have loved thee with an everlasting love" (Jer. xxxi. 3).

But Adam sinned and fell, and so we were born "children of wrath." Yes, and Christ died and redeemed us, and so we became again "sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty," children not now in Adam, "which was the son of God," but in the second Adam, "which is the only begotten Son of God." God loves us now in Christ.

Let me apply this to myself. Oh! what a glorious conclusion do these considerations lead me to. That God gives to me, even to me! the undivided fulness of His infinite love; loves me as if I were the first created of His creatures; as if there were no other creature; as if God and I were alone-heart to heart in the universe. "O God, Thou art my God." "My soul hangeth upon Thee!" "He loved me and gave Himself for me" (Gal. ii. 20). How little do I love God with corresponding love! He is regarding me every moment, giving the whole attention of His Divine mind to me; and I, how seldom do I ever think of Him. He is sustaining my life, providing for me, making all things work together for good to me. He has been long-suffering with me in spite of my wasted life and my many sins. His Holy Spirit is even now within me, helping me to draw nearer to Him. He loves me with an infinite love. Oh! how cold and ungrateful am I !

O God, forgive me all my sins-my sins against Thy love -and make me to love Thee as I ought.

CHAPTER V.

GOD'S PROVIDENCE-CONTRASTS IN THE DIVINE BEING-IMMENSITY AND UBIQUITY—STILLNESS AND ACTIVITY -CONTEMPLATION AND PROVIDENCE-INCOMPREHEN

SIBLENESS.

WHEN God made matter He did not give it an independent existence, so that it now stands by itself, and would stand though God should—if it were possible—cease to exist.

When God had formed the world out of matter, He did not wind it up like a clock, and leave it to go by itself.

God keeps all things in existence from moment to moment by a conscious exercise of His will; and if He were to suspend the action of His will for an instant, in that instant everything would fall back into nothingness again. "He is before all things, and by Him all things consist" (Col. i. 17). "Upholding all things by the word of His power" (Heb. i. 3).

God also rules or controls everything—what it does and what is done to it-at every moment.

"He

He combines all things according to His will. maketh all things work together-for good to them that love Him" (Rom. viii. 28).

That God is, and made the world, but does not sustain and govern it, is the creed of the Theist, not of the Christian.

The doctrine that God sustains and governs everytning, always, is what we call the Providence of God.

A man can combine two or three things or persons in

harmonious action, making each do its own work, and each help the other, and all unite to produce some common result. A man can combine and regulate a greater or less number of things in proportion as He is more or less skilful. God "makes all things work together," because He is infinitely wise and powerful. He makes all things work harmoniously together, so that each does its own work, and each helps the other, and all together effect His will. And because God is infinitely good, He makes all things work together for the highest good of each creature at every moment.

Think of yourself, for example. God can, and does, make all the universe combine to further your highest good at every moment, just as if everything had been made for your sake, and all other interests were made subservient to yours.

And yet because God is infinite, He can, and does make the whole universe combine to further the highest good of your neighbour, and all other interests subservient to his.

Nay, further, since from all eternity God had you in His Divine mind, and gave His whole attention to you continually, from all eternity He made all successive creatures with an eye to you, and directed the whole course of human history with an eye to the place which you would occupy in it when He should, in the fulness of time, create you. And thus-wonderful view of the Divine Providence-from all eternity He has made and governed everything so that all should work together for the highest good of every one of His creatures, at every instant of time, and no one person, however insignificant, be sacrificed to any other.

CONTRASTS IN THE BEING OF GOD.

Let us take up another line of thought, and try to rise to

new conceptions of the mystery of the Being of God by considering some of the contrasts in it.

We have already seen one of these contrasts, viz., that God's Being fills all immensity, and yet in all the entireness of His being He is present in a point of space.

Take another contrast-the stillness of God contrasted with His unceasing and vast energies. Look at His stillness. There is with God no passing from place to place, no living from hour to hour, with all the variety of time and place. He is subject to no impressions of expectation or surprise, desire or disappointment. He is absolutely unchanging-"The same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." On the other hand look at His intense and ceaseless energy. You have stood by some steam engine, and watched the great iron piston-rod rise and fall, with smooth, easy, irresistible force, and the fly-wheel whirl round with such amazing velocity, yet with such evenness that it almost seemed at rest; and you have felt that there was something awful in the sight of that effortless, irresistible force, a symbol of the smooth, mighty, natural forces. You may have stood one day on the edge of a railway platform, while a great express train rushed past at the rate of sixty miles an hour, and left you holding your breath and shrinking in every nerve, awe-struck with the terrible manifestation of power. But think, if you could stand on that independent point of space outside the world, which the great philosopher desired, while the huge world approached, rushed past and diminished in the distance, at the rate of hundreds of miles a minute! or if you could stand in the sun and see all the planetary system whirling round you, and comets rushing towards the source of light, and away again to lose themselves in space! If you could stand at the central point of the universe, and see all the suns with their dependent systems whirling round and round incessantly,

all urged to their speed, and all controlled in their orbits, by the energy of the Divine will, that would afford some measure of the energies within the depths of the Divine essence which is all the while so calm and still.

Or, lastly, look at the period when God was alone in the universe absorbed in the blissful contemplation of the Divine perfections. And consider Him now on the throne of the universe, intent with sleepless solicitude upon the well-being of the myriads of inhabitants of a myriad worlds, from the animalcula in a drop of water here on earth to the mighty archangels who surround the throne. In that lonely eternity God already had all these creatures present to His mind; and now the awful complexity of a universal providence costs no effort to the Divine mind, nor distracts the calm and blissful self-contemplation of Deity.

Our souls flag and faint in straining upwards and striving to see something of the meaning of these great truths of the Divine Being. We cannot understand them; we can only hold them by faith. We are conscious that they are only partial glimpses of a nature vast and deep and wonderful, beyond all reach of created faculties to comprehend. We stand within the boundless expanse of the Divine Being, and look into it on all sides of us, and catch a glimpse of a definite feature here and there, where the light of revelation falls upon it; but we are conscious of infinite depths which we cannot see into. There may be there probably are there-glories of which we have no more conception than a blind man of the splendour of the sun or the beauty of a landscape; there may be exquisite harmonies which we can no more hear than a deaf man the grand music of a cathedral service; there may be Divine attributes which are as unknown to us as the thought and reason of an archangel are to an insect.

But after all that can be said of God, this remains to be