Men speak about theology as they do about revelation, as if the past had all the light and the power, as if we had not the Book itself, as if God could not reveal Himself to the soul now in the ministry of the Word, as if the ministry was not becoming less formal and more spiritual, as if God could not speak without any intervening ministry to man. There are still revelations which God makes to us by His Spirit, for "the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God."

We need new, constant assurances of the Divine love. We cannot live in the past alone. Do you ask why are new revelations necessary? Why is it not enough to be told once that God loves us? Why must we be told again and again? I answer, we should require assurances of love from a friend if we felt that our affinities with his pure nature were anything but entire, that we often pained him by our recklessness, and prevented his intercourse with us. by our indifference; and surely, with all my frailties and sins, with the deep consciousness of my unworthiness, I need God to tell me that He loves me, and I want Him to repeat the assurance.

There is, moreover, a peculiar sensitiveness about love; it craves for fresh utterances, for strong, unequivocal assertions, just as Jonathan caused David to swear again, because he loved him as his own soul; so the love of God is so essential to us that we cannot live without it, we prize it above all

things, and hence we long to hear, in the depths of our souls, the words, "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love.”

Are there not actual revelations of the love of God made to the soul by the Holy Ghost? Does He not shed abroad the love of God in our hearts? What is the meaning of this, but the personal realisation of the love of God, but the consciousness that that love enfolds us and fills us? The soul must always commune with the object of its love, and express its admiration, and in this Divine fellowship God makes us to know that He has loved us. What can I do in darkness, in mystery, in sorrow, unless I fall back on the love of God. This is the strength of my heart in life and death.

III. The love of God is ever new.

It is an everlasting love. If I try to get an idea of that past eternity I soon lose myself. It is by the most daring flight of the imagination that I conceive of a period when nothing was made. God loved us even then. He gave us grace in Christ before the world began. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. God's love is more ancient than the mountains; it is older than the everlasting hills. Your parents loved you long before you knew their love. God loved you long before you realised His love. You have, perhaps, sometimes thought that He loved you because you loved Him; it is quite the reverse; you love Him because He first loved you.

God will still love, through all changes-in sorrow, in sickness, in old age, in death. God will love us for ever. His love is always fresh; it is the same to-day as yesterday, and to-morrow it will be as to-day.

IV. It is God's love that attracts men.

This

This love draws. Men yield to this Divine power -"With lovingkindness have I drawn thee." is the power of the Gospel; this subdued, this won you. What melted that heart of ice,-what, but the warm breath of love? What drew you, but the cords of love that were entwined about your heart? You may terrify man, you only keep him from God. The great question is, how to draw him to God. Let him know that though he has left his Father's house and gone into a far country, his Father still loves him. This will lead him to return. Little is said in this book about penalties, about the fearful apparatus of punishment in the future. Much is said about love, about pardon, about salvation for the lost. Punishment does little for men. Love is the only conqueror of hearts. There are cords of love; lay hold of them, for God is drawing you to Himself. It is with lovingkindness that He draws

you.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE UNSEEN.

"Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Ammi-nadib."-SONG OF SOLOMON, vi. 12.

THE world passeth away and the lusts thereof. The spiritual alone is permanent. Some men acquire notoriety in their day, their name passes into a proverb, and yet, singular to say, in after times, we find their names recorded, but we are at a loss to know what their deeds were which made them so famous. If there be true fame, a man's works will follow. If fame be the result of adventitious circumstances, it will be as evanescent as the glory of the grass, or the beauty of the flower. I have read out a text in which a man's name occurs about whom we know nothing. I have read it, because as a proverbial saying, it may be regarded as an illustration of the spontaneity and intuition of the heart. The affections under the guidance of the will becoming a chariot, in which the man is borne away.

I. Spiritual spontaneity.

It will be well at the beginning to explain terms. Spontaneity signifies that which is voluntary and unconstrained, free and instantaneous action. The

central point of consciousness, that which makes each man what he is, in distinction from every other, is the will. The will is power-spontaneity is the capacity of acting independently, and for ourselves. Without spontaneity our lives would sink to the dull, dead level of things, we should be mere links in the great chain of cause and effect. Without spontaneity we should be things, not men. This power, this pure activity is necessary to our personality. We are about to speak of the spontaneity of life—that is, spiritual life.

This spiritual life is God's gift. "The gift of God is eternal life." "He that hath the Son hath life." It is life "hid with Christ in God." It is Divine life. Life coming from God and going to God; light ascending to light; purity going up to purity; love seeking fellowship with love. Where this life exists, there is true unity, for the life is, so to speak, a common life, it is the life of God in the soul of man. The soul claims God as its own, and God claims the soul as His. In this Song the Bride is represented as saying, "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine." A spiritual man like Paul still loses his own identity in Christ, and says, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."

By the spontaneity of this life, we mean that its impulses, sensibilities, and affections are not the result of a painful and protracted effort, but spring from life as its natural manifestation and development.