den upon Him, and He
"sustained me?" How have seeming difficulties melted away! How has the
yoke lost its heaviness, and the cross its bitterness, in the thought of
whom thou wert bearing it for! There is a promised rest in the very
carrying of the yoke; and a better rest remains for the weary and
toil-worn when the appointed work is finished; for thus saith "that same
Jesus,"

"TAKE MY YOKE UPON YOU, AND LEARN OF ME, ... AND YE SHALL FIND _REST_
UNTO YOUR SOULS."

16TH DAY.

"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said"--

"As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you."--John xv. 9.

The Measure of Love.

This is the most wondrous verse in the Bible. Who can sound the
unimagined depths of that love which dwelt in the bosom of the Father
from all eternity towards His Son?--and yet here is the Saviour's own
exponent of His love towards His people!

There is no subject more profoundly mysterious than those mystic
intercommunings between the first and second persons in the adorable
Trinity before the world was. Scripture gives us only some dim and
shadowy revelations regarding them--distant gleams of light, and no
more. Let one suffice. "_Then_ I was by Him, as one brought up with Him,
and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him."

We know that earthly affection is deepened and intensified by increased
familiarity with its object. The friendship of yesterday is not the
sacred, hallowed thing, which years of growing intercourse have matured.
If we may with reverence apply this test to the highest type of holy
affection, what must have been that interchange of love which the
measureless lapse of Eternity had fostered--a love, moreover, not
fitful, transient, vacillating, subject to altered tones and estranged
looks--but pure, constant, untainted, without one shadow of turning! And
yet, listen to the "words of Jesus," As the Father hath loved _me_, _so_
have I loved _you_! It would have been infinitely more than we had
reason to expect, if He had said, "As my Father hath loved ANGELS, so
have I loved you." But the love borne to no finite beings is an
appropriate symbol. Long before the birth of time or of worlds, that
love existed. It was coeval with Eternity itself. Hear how the two
themes of the Saviour's eternal rejoicing--the _love of His Father_, and
His _love for sinners_--are grouped together;--"Rejoicing always before
HIM, _and_ in the habitable part of His _earth_!