sinful creature who yet cleaves to his sins to His heart, as He does
the penitent soul that longs for His image to be produced in it, is
to blaspheme, and not to honour the love, the universal love of God.

God forbid that any words that ever drop from my lips should seem to
cast the smallest shadow of doubt on that great truth, 'God so loved
the world that He gave His Son!' But God forbid, equally, that any
words of mine should seem to favour the, to me, repellent idea that
the infinite love of God disregards the character of the man on whom
it falls. There are manifestations of that loving heart which any man
can receive; and each man gets as much of the love of God as it is
possible to pour upon him. But granite rock does not drink in the dew
as a flower does; and the nature of the man on whom God's love falls
determines how much, and what manner of its manifestations shall pass
into his true possession, and what shall remain without.

So, on the whole, we have to answer the questions, 'Does God love
any? Does not God love all? Does God specially love some?' with the
one monosyllable, 'Yes.'

And so, dear brethren, let us learn the path by which we can pass
into that blessed community of those on whom the fullness and
sweetness and tenderest tenderness of the Father's heart will fall.
'If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love
him.' Myths tell us that the light which, at the beginning, had been
diffused through a nebulous mass, was next gathered into a sun. So
the universal love of God is concentrated in Jesus Christ; and if we
have Him we have it; and if we have faith we have Him, and can say,
'Neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate