, away down upon
the horizon, if it had not been for the Gospel; and who now turn
round upon that very Gospel which has given them the conception,
and accuse it of narrow and hard thoughts of the love of God.

One of the Scripture truths against which the assailant often turns
his sharpest weapons is that which is involved in my text, the
Scripture answer to the other question, 'Does not God love all?' Yes!
yes! a thousand times, yes! But there is another question, Does the
love of God, to all, make His special designation of Christian men as
His beloved the least unlikely? Surely there is no kind of
contradiction between the broadest proclamation of the universality
of the love of God and Paul's decisive declaration that, in a very
deep and real manner, they who are in Christ are the beloved of God.
Surely special affection is not in its nature, inconsistent with
universal beneficence and benevolence. Surely it is no exaltation,
but rather a degradation of the conception of the divine love, if we
proclaim its utter indifference to men's characters. Surely you are
not honouring God when you say, 'It is all the same to Him whether a
man loves Him and serves Him, or lifts himself up in rebellion
against Him, and makes himself his own centre, and earth his aim and
his all.' Surely to imagine a God who not only makes His sun to shine
and His rains and dews to fall on the unthankful and the evil, that
He may draw them to love Him, but who also is conceived as taking the
sinful creature who yet cleaves to his sins to His heart, as He does
the penitent soul that longs for His image to be produced in it, is
to blaspheme, and not to honour the love, the universal love of God.

God forbid that any words that ever drop from my lips should seem to
cast the smallest shadow of doubt on that great truth, 'God so loved
the world that He gave His Son!' But God forbid, equally, that any
words of mine should seem to favour the, to me, repellent idea that
the infinite love of God disregards the character of the man on whom
it falls. There are manifestations of that loving heart which any man
can receive; and each man gets as much of the love of God as it is
possible to pour upon him. But granite rock does not drink in the dew
as a flower does; and the nature of the man on whom God's love falls
determines how much, and what manner of its manifestations shall pass
into his true possession, and what shall remain without.

So, on the whole,