smelted down to make that
rushing river of molten love which flows from the Cross of Christ into
the hearts of men. Here is the highest point of God's revelation of
Himself.

And my text implies, still further, that the true living, flashing
centre of the glory of God is the love of God. Christendom is more than
half heathen yet, and it betrays its heathenism not least in its vulgar
conceptions of the divine nature and its glory. The majestic attributes
which separate God from man, and make Him unlike His creatures, are the
ones which people too often fancy belong to the glorious side of His
character. They draw distinctions between 'grace' and 'glory,' and think
that the latter applies mainly to what I might call the physical and the
metaphysical, and less to the moral, attributes of the divine nature. We
adore power, and when it is expanded to infinity we think that it is the
glory of God. But my text delivers us from all such misconceptions. If
we rightly understand it, then we learn this, that the true heart of the
glory is tenderness and love. Of power that weak man hanging on the
Cross is a strange embodiment; but if we learn that there is something
more godlike in God than power, then we can say, as we look upon Jesus
Christ: 'Lo! this is our God. We have waited for Him, and He will save
us.' Not in the wisdom that knows no growth, not in the knowledge which
has no border-land of ignorance ringing it round about, not in the
unwearied might of His arm, not in the exhaustless energy of His being,
not in the unslumbering watchfulness of His all-seeing eye, not in that
awful presence wheresoever creatures are; not in any or in all of these
lies the glory of God, but in His love. These are the fringes of the
brightness; this is the central blaze. The Gospel is the Gospel of the
glory of God, because it is all summed up in the one word--'God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son.'

II. Now, in the next place, the revelation of God in Christ is an
element in the blessedness of God.

We are come here into places where we see but very dimly, and it becomes
us to speak very cautiously. Only as we are led by the divine teaching
may we affirm at all. But it cannot be unwise to accept in simple
literality utterances of Scripture, however they may seem to strike us
as strange. And so I would say--the philosopher's God may be
all-sufficient and unemotional, the Bible's God 'delighteth in mercy,'
rejoiceth in