(Ephesians iii. 19.)

If I could only make men understand the real meaning of the words of
the apostle John--"God is love," I would take that single text, and
would go up and down the world proclaiming this glorious truth. If
you can convince a man that you love him you have won his heart. If
we really make people believe that God loves them, how we should find
them crowding into the kingdom of heaven! The trouble is that men
think God hates them; and so they are all the time running away from
Him.

We built a church in Chicago some years ago; and were very anxious to
teach the people the love of God. We thought if we could not preach
it into their hearts we would try and burn it in; so we put right
over the pulpit in gas-jets these words--God is Love. A man going
along the streets one night glanced through the door, and saw the
text. He was a poor prodigal. As he passed on he thought to himself,
"God is Love! No! He does not love me; for I am a poor miserable
sinner." He tried to get rid of the text; but it seemed to stand out
right before him in letters of fire. He went on a little further;
then turned round, went back, and went into the meeting. He did not
hear the sermon; but the words of that short text had got deeply
lodged in his heart, and that was enough. It is of little account
what men say if the Word of God only gets an entrance into the
sinner's heart. He staid after the first meeting was over; and I
found him there weeping like a child. As I unfolded the Scriptures
and told him how God had loved him all the time, although he had
wandered so far away, and how God was waiting to receive him and
forgive him, the light of the Gospel broke into his mind, and he went
away rejoicing.

There is nothing in this world that men prize so much us they do
Love. Show me a person who has no one to care for or love him, and I
will show you one of the most wretched beings on the face of the
earth. Why do people commit suicide? Very often it is because this
thought steals in upon them--that no one loves them; and they would
rather die than live.

I know of no truth in the whole Bible that ought to come home to us
with such power and tenderness as that of the Love of God; and there
is no truth in the Bible that Satan would so much like to blot out.
For more than six thousand years he has been trying to persuade men
that God does not love them. He succeeded in making our first parents
believe this lie; and he too o