ove stands to all these other attributes in the relation of being their
master and motive spring. They are Love's instrument, and in the divine
nature Love is Lord of all. They give it majesty; it gives them
tenderness. We may reverently say, in regard to the divine nature, what
the Apostle says about our humanity, that love is the 'bond of
perfectness'--the girdle which, braced round all the garments, keeps
them in their place. For round these infinite, innumerable, unnameable,
and named divine perfections, is that which brings them all into
symmetry and keeps them all in harmonious action--Love. He has wisdom,
and power, and eternal being, but He is Love.

But do not let us forget that whilst thus my text proclaims the ultimate
truth, these other attributes, as they are called, are all smelted down,
as it were, into, and present in, the love which is their crown. The
same Apostle, who has thus the honour of ringing out to the world the
good news that God is Love, declares that 'this is the message' which he
has to tell, that 'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.' So
the light of righteousness, as well as the lambent flame of love, burn
together on that central fire of the universe. We must not so conceive
of the love of God, as to darken the radiance of His righteousness, or
to obscure the brilliancy of that pure light which tolerates no
admixture of darkness.

May I venture a step further, and ask whether we are not warranted in
believing that in that which we call the love of God there do abide the
same elements as characterise the thing that bears the same name in our
human experience? The spectrum has told us that the constituents of the
mighty sun in the heavens are the same as the constituents of this
little darkened earth. And there are the same lines in the divine
spectrum that there are in ours. So if we can venture to say of Him, He
is Love, do not let us shrink from saying that then, like us, He
delights in the companionship of His beloved; that, like us, He rejoices
in giving Himself to His beloved; that, like us, but infinitely, He
desires the good of His beloved; and that, like us, He seeks only for
the requital of an answering love. All these things, the joy of the Lord
in man, the yielding of the Lord to man, the beneficent desire of the
Lord for the good of man, and the hunger of the Lord for the response of
love from man--all these things are affirmed when we affirm that God is
Love.

O