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Music For the Soul
Devotional: February 10th

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THE LOVE THAT IS GIVEN

Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God: and such we are. - 1 John 3:1

WE are called upon to come with our little vessels to measure the contents of the great ocean, to plumb with our short lines the infinite abyss, and not only to estimate the quantity, but the quality, of that love, which, in both, surpasses all our means of comparison and conception.

Properly speaking, we can do neither the one nor the other, for we have no line long enough to sound the depths, and no experience which will give us a standard with which to compare its quality. But all that we can do, John would have us do - that is, work, and ever look at the workings of that love till we form some not wholly inadequate idea of it.

We can no more " behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us" than we can look with undimmed eyes right into the middle of the sun. But we can in some measure imagine the tremendous and beneficent forces that ride forth horsed on his beams to distances which the imagination faints in trying to grasp, and reach their journey’s end unwearied and ready for their tasks as when it began. Here are we ninety odd millions of miles from the centre of the system, yet warmed by its heat, lighted by its light, and touched for good by its power in a thousand ways. All that has been going on for no one knows how many aeons. How mighty the Power which produces these effects! In like manner, who can gaze into the fiery depths of that infinite Godhead, into the ardors of that immeasurable, incomparable, inconceivable love? But we can look at and measure its activities. We can see what it does, and so can in some degree understand it, and feel that after all we have a measure for the Immeasurable, a comparison for the Incomparable, and can thus "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us."

We may gain another measure of the greatness of this love if we put an emphasis on one word, and think of the love given to "us," such creatures as we are. Out of the depths we cry to Him, not only by the voice of our supplications, but even when we raise no call of entreaty, our misery pleads with His merciful heart, and from the heights there comes upon our wretchedness and sin the rush of this great love, like a cataract, which sweeps away all our sins, and floods us with its own blessedness and joy. The more we know ourselves, the more wonderingly and thankfully shall we bow down our hearts before Him, as we measure His mercy by our unworthiness.

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