we have to answer the questions, 'Does God love
any? Does not God love all? Does God specially love some?' with the
one monosyllable, 'Yes.'

And so, dear brethren, let us learn the path by which we can pass
into that blessed community of those on whom the fullness and
sweetness and tenderest tenderness of the Father's heart will fall.
'If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love
him.' Myths tell us that the light which, at the beginning, had been
diffused through a nebulous mass, was next gathered into a sun. So
the universal love of God is concentrated in Jesus Christ; and if we
have Him we have it; and if we have faith we have Him, and can say,
'Neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate
us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'

II. Then, secondly, mark the universal obligation of the Christian
life.

'Called to be saints,' says my text. Now you will observe that the
two little words 'to be' are inserted here as a supplement. They may
be correct enough, but they are open to the possibility of
misunderstanding, as if the saintship, to which all Christian people
are 'called' was something future, and not realised at the moment.
Now, in the context, the Apostle employs the same form of expression
with regard to himself in a clause which illuminates the meaning of
my text. 'Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ' says he, in the first
verse, 'called to be an Apostle' or, more correctly, 'a called
Apostle.' The apostleship coincided in time with the call, was
contemporaneous with that which was its cause. And if Paul was an
Apostle since he was called, saints are saints since _they_ are
called. 'The beloved of God' are 'the called saints.'

I need only observe, further, that the word 'called' here does not
mean 'named' or 'designated' but 'summoned.' It describes not the
name by which Christian men are known, but the thing which they are
invited, summoned, 'called' by God to be. It is their vocation, not
their designation. Now, then, I need not, I suppose, remind you that
'saint' and 'holy' convey precisely the same idea: the one expressing
it in a word of Teutonic, and the other in one of classic derivation.

We notice that the true idea of this universal holiness which, _ipso
facto_, belongs to all Christian people, is consecration to God. In
the old days temple, altars, sacrifices, sacri