be in
receiving, then we may be sure that His mercy endureth for ever, and
that it is the very necessity of His being--and He cannot turn His back
upon Himself--to love, to pity, to succour, and to bless.

III. And so, lastly, the revelation of God in Christ is good news for us
all.

'The Gospel of the glory of the blessed God.' How that word 'Gospel' has
got tarnished and enfeebled by constant use and unreflective use, so
that it slips glibly off my tongue and falls without producing any
effect upon your hearts! It needs to be freshened up by considering what
really it means. It means this: here are we like men shut up in a
beleaguered city, hopeless, helpless, with no power to break out or to
raise the siege; provisions failing, death certain. Some of you older
men and women remember how that was the case in that awful siege of
Paris, in the Franco-German War, and what expedients were adopted in
order to get some communication from without. And here to us, prisoned,
comes, as it did to them, a despatch borne under a dove's wing, and the
message is this:--God is love; and that you may know that He is, He has
sent you His Son who died on the Cross, the sacrifice for a world's sin.
Believe it, and trust it, and all your transgressions will pass away.

My brother, is not that good news? Is it not _the_ good news that you
need--the news of a Father, of pardon, of hope, of love, of strength, of
purity, of heaven? Does it not meet our fears, our forebodings, our
wants at every point? It comes to you. What do you do with it? Do you
welcome it eagerly, do you clutch it to your hearts, do you say, 'This
is _my_ Gospel'? Oh! let me beseech you, welcome the message; do not
turn away from the word from heaven, which will bring life and
blessedness to all your hearts! Some of you have turned away long
enough, some of you, perhaps, are fighting with the temptation to do so
again even now. Let me press that ancient Gospel upon your acceptance,
that Christ the Son of God has died for you, and lives to bless and help
you. Take it and live! So shall you find that, 'as cold water to a
thirsty soul,' so is this best of all news from the far country.

THE GOSPEL IN SMALL

'This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners.'--1 TIM. i. 15.

Condensation is a difficult art. There are few things drier and more
unsatisfactory than small