her child, and cherishing them in His bosom.

Still further, the word is in a form in the Hebrew which implies that
the act spoken about is neither past, present, nor future only, but
continuous and perpetual. Thus it suggests to us the thought of
timeless, eternal love, which has no beginning, and therefore has no
end, which does not grow, and therefore will never decline nor decay,
but which runs on upon one lofty level, with neither ups nor downs, and
with no variation of the impulse which sends it forth; always the same,
and always holding its objects in the fervent embrace of which the text
speaks.

Further, mark the place in this great song where this thought comes in.
As I said, it is laid as the beginning of everything. 'We love Him
because He first loved us' was the height to which the last of the
Apostles attained in the last of his writings. But this old singer,
with the mists of antiquity around him, who knew nothing about the
Cross, nothing about the historical Christ, who had only that which
modern thinkers tell us is a revelation of a wrathful God, somehow or
other rose to the height of the evangelical conception of God's love as
the foundation of the very existence of a people who are His. Like an
orchid growing on a block of dry wood and putting forth a gorgeous
bloom, this singer, with so much less to feed his faith than we have,
has yet borne this fair flower of deep and devout insight into the
secret of things and the heart of God. 'He loved the people'--
therefore He formed them for Himself; therefore He brought them out of
bondage; therefore He came down in flashing fire on Sinai and made
known His will, which to know and do is life. All begins from the
tender, timeless love of God.