II. Then the next thought of my texts, which I do not force into them,
but which results, as it seems to me, distinctly from the order in which
they occur in the context, is that love follows trust.

'All those that put their trust in Thee--they also that love Thee.' If I
am to love God, I must be quite sure that God loves me. My love can
never be anything else than an answer to His. It can only be secondary
and derived, or I would rather say reflected and flashed back from His.
And so, very significantly, the Psalmist says, 'Those that love Thy
Name,' meaning by 'Name,' as is always meant by it, the revealed
character of God. If I am to love God, He must not hide in the darkness
behind His infinity, but must come out and give me something about Him
that I know. The three letters G O D mean nothing, and there is no power
in them to stir a man's heart. It must be the knowledge of the acts of
God that brings men to love Him. And there is no way of getting that
knowledge but through the faith which, as I said, must precede love. For
faith realises the fact that God loves. 'We have known and believed the
love that God hath to us.' The first step is to grasp the great truth of
the loving God, and through that truth to grasp the God that loves. And
then, and not till then, does there spring up in a man's heart love
towards Him. But it is only the faith that is set on Him who hath
declared the Father unto us that gives us for our very own the grasp of
the facts, which facts are the only possible fuel that can kindle love
in a human heart. 'We love Him because He first loved us,' and we shall
never know that He loves us unless we come to the knowledge through the
road of faith. So John himself tells us when he says, in the words that
I have already quoted, 'We have known and believed.' He puts the
foundation last, 'We have known,' because 'we have believed' 'the love
that God hath to us.'