ernal.

With that caution Paul would have us think that God's chiefest purpose
in all the wondrous facts which make up the Gospel is the setting forth
of Himself, and that the chiefest part of Himself, which He desires that
all men should come to know, is the glory of His grace. Of course very
many and various reasons for these acts may be alleged, but this is the
deepest of them all. It has often been misunderstood and made into a
very hard and horrible doctrine, which really means little else than
all-mighty selfishness, but it is really a most blessed one; it is the
proclamation in tenderest, most heart-melting fashion of the truth that
God is Love, and therefore delights in imparting that which is His
creatures' life and blessedness; it bids us think that He, too, amidst
the blessedness of His infinite Being, knows the joy of communicating
which makes so large a part of the blessedness of our finite selves, and
that He, too, is capable of being touched and gladdened by the joy of
expression. As an artist in his noblest work paints or chisels simply
for love of pouring out his soul, so, but in infinitely loftier fashion,
the great Artist delights to manifest Himself, and in manifesting to
communicate somewhat of Himself. Creation is divine self-revelation, and
we might say, with all reverence, that God acts as birds sing, and
fountains leap, and stars shine.

But our text leads us still farther into mysteries of glory, when it
defines what it is in God that he most desires to set forth. It is the
'exceeding riches of Grace,' in which wonderful expression we note the
Apostle's passionate accumulation of epithets which he yet feels to be
altogether inadequate to his theme. It would carry us too far to attempt
to bring out the whole wealth contained in these words which glide so
easily over unthinking lips, but we may lovingly dwell for a few moments
upon them. Grace, in Paul's language, means love lavished upon the
undeserving and sinful, a love which is not drawn forth by the
perception of any excellence in its objects, but wells up and out like a
fountain, by reason of the impulse in its subject, and which in itself
contains and bestows all good and blessing. There may be, as this very
letter shows, other aspects of the divine nature which God is glad that
man should know. His power and His wisdom have their noblest
illustration in the work of Jesus, and are less conspicuously manifested
in all His work; but His gra