permanent magnet, and as long as you leave
the two side by side, they are both magnets alike. Remain side by side
with Him who loved us, and

GAVE HIMSELF FOR US,

and you, too, will become a permanent magnet, a permanently attractive
force; and like Him you will draw all men unto you, like Him you will
be drawn unto all men. That is the inevitable effect of Love. Any man
who fulfills that cause must have that effect produced in him.

Try to give up the idea that religion comes to us by chance, or by
mystery, or by caprice. It comes to us by natural law, or by
supernatural law, for all law is Divine.

Edward Irving went to see a dying boy once, and when he entered the
room he just put his hand on the sufferer's head, and said, "My boy,
God loves you," and went away. The boy started from his bed, and
called out to the people in the house,

"God loves me! God loves me!"

One word! It changed that boy. The sense that God loved him
overpowered him, melted him down, and began the creating of a new
heart in him. And that is how the love of God melts down the unlovely
heart in man, and begets in him the new creature, who is patient and
humble and gentle and unselfish. And there is no other way to get it.
There is no mystery about it. We love others, we love everybody, we
love our enemies, _because He first loved us_.

III. THE DEFENCE.

Now I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul's reason for
singling out love as the supreme possession.

It is a very remarkable reason. In a single word it is this: _it
lasts._ "Love," urges Paul, "never faileth." Then he begins again one
of his marvelous lists of the great things of the day, and exposes
them one by one. He runs over the things that men thought were going
to last, and shows that they are all fleeting, temporary, passing
away.

"Whether there be _prophecies_, they shall be done away." It was the
mother's ambition for her boy in those days that he should become a
prophet. For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any
prophet, and at that time the prophet was greater than the king. Men
waited wistfully for another messenger to come, and hung upon his lips
when he appeared, as upon the very voice of God. Paul says, "Whether
there be prophecies, they shall fail." The Bible is full of
prophecies. One by one they have "failed"; that is, having been
fulfilled, their work is finished; they have nothing more to do now in
the world except