own and believed the love"
which the Great Redeemer bore to their brother, and they further felt
assured that "loving him at the beginning, He would love him even to the
end." Their love to Lazarus (tender, unspeakably tender as it was one of
the loveliest types of human affection)--was at best an _earthly
love_--finite--imperfect--fitful--changing--perishable. But the love
they invoked was undying and everlasting, superior to all
vacillation--enduring as eternity.

It is ours "to take encouragement in prayer from God only;"--to plead
nothing of our own--our poor devotedness, or our unworthy services; they
are rather arguments for our condemnation;--but _His_ promises are all
"Yea, and amen." They never fail. His name is "a strong tower," running
into which the righteous are safe. That tower is garrisoned and
bulwarked by the attributes of His own everlasting nature. Among these
attributes not the least glorious is His _Love_--_that_ unfathomable
love which dwelt in His bosom from all eternity, and which is immutably
pledged never to be taken from His people!

Man's love to his God is like the changing sand--_His_ is like the solid
rock. Man's love is like the passing meteor with its fitful gleam. _His_
like the fixed stars, shining far above, clear and serene, from age to
age, in their own changeless firmament.

Do we know anything of the words of this message? Could it be written on
our hearts in life? Were we to die, could it be inscribed on our tombs,
"This is one whom _Jesus loved_?"

Happy assurance! The pure spirits who bend before the throne know no
happier. The archangels--the chieftains among principalities and powers,
can claim no higher privilege, no loftier badge of glory!

Love is the atmosphere they breathe. It is the grand moral law of
gravitation in the heavenly economy. God, the central sun of light, and
joy, and glory, keeping by this great motive principle every spiritual
planet in its orbit, "for _God is love_."

That love is not confined to heaven. It may be foretasted here. The sick
man of Bethany knew of it, and exulted in it. Though in the moment of
dissolution he had to mourn the personal absence of his Lord, yet
"believing" in that love, he "rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of
glory." His sisters, as they stood in sorrowing emotion by his dying
couch, and thought of that hallowed fraternal bond which was about so
soon to be dissolved, could triumph in the thought of an affection
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