SERMON II.

THE LOVE OF GOD IN THE GIFT OF A SAVIOUR.

John iii. 16. God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

THESE are the words of the Redeemer. They express in the briefest space the substance of the gospel. No public speaker ever possessed the power of condensing the great principles of a system of truth into so narrow a compass as the Lord Jesus; and his instructions abound with instances of this condensation. Such deelarations were easily treasured up in the memory, and were, therefore, eminently adapted to the end which he had in view -the instruction and salvation of the mass of mankind. The terms of the text require no particular exposition; and we shall proceed at once to the contemplation of the great truths which in so simple language it embodies. It affirms that the origin of the plan of salvation was the love of God; that that love was of the highest degreeleading him to the gift of his only begotten Son; and that it was of the widest extent-embracing the world. We shall consider these points in their order; and shall thus have before us the outlines of the great system of the gospel. I do not suppose that it will be new to you. I have no truths, and perhaps no illustrations, which you have not often contemplated before. I present a system, however, on which, whether it be to you new or old, your eternal welfare depends; and which every consideration of gratitude, of self-interest, of obligation, and of hope, calls on you to embrace and love.

I. The first proposition is, that the plan of salvation originated in the love of God. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son." This idea, so simple in appearance, is at the basis of all just views of religion, and strikes far into different systems, and will modify or

control them. The following remarks, in illustration of it, will convey to you the thoughts which I wish to have impressed on your minds.

The idea that God is a God of love, is not one that is very extensively embraced by mankind. Large classes of mankind suppose that if God were a benevolent being, he would have made a world perfectly happy and pure; and the fact that sin and misery so extensively prevail, is, in their view, wholly at war with such a proposition. To them it furnishes no proof of his goodness that he provides remedies and means of deliverance from these evils, but they ask why was not the evil itself prevented, and why was there a necessity for a remedy? A man is sick, and we tell him that the fact that remedies are provided for the various maladies which afflict the body, is a proof of goodness, and he at once turns upon us in a manner which we cannot well meet, and asks why was not the sickness itself prevented? Why was there need of a remedy? Would not higher benevolence have been evinced had pleurisies, and palsies, and fevers, and consumptions been unknown? Why, he asks, was a system formed ever requiring such a device as that of a remedy; why one that needs mending and repairing; why one that was not perfect without the toil and expense of mitigating evils, and repairing wastes? And this man leaves us, after all that we can say, with the feeling that the proof is very imperfect that God is a God of love; and on such a mind the proposition that he so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, falls with little force. He feels, perhaps, in spite of himself, that back of all this there is something in the divine bosom that is remote from the proper exercise of love, and that a dying and a suffering world is fitted to neutralize all the argument for benevolence which can be drawn from a remedial system.

On another class of minds the same result is produced by a different train of thought; a train of thought that is sometimes countenanced, I fear, by prevalent views in theology. With such minds the supposition is, that the Bible teaches that God is originally a stern and inexorable being; that the attribute of justice is the central and controlling attribute of his character; that in his nature all

is dark, repulsive, and cold; that he is indisposed to pardon, unrelenting in his claims, severe in his adjudications, and by nature deaf to the cry of the suffering and the penitent. That sustaining this character, and with these feelings, one more mild and kind than he has consented to become incarnate, and to suffer the unrelenting penalty of the law, in order, as a primary part of his work, to make God kind and forgiving. That whatever inclination to mercy there may be now in the character of God, it is the result of purchase; that he is disposed to bestow only so much pardon as is bought; that towards a part of the human race, as the result of that purchase, he is now mild and benignant, and that towards the unhappy remainder the original sternness of his character is unmitigated, and that even the sufferings of the atonement have not relaxed the rigidity of his justice in regard to them. The feeling is, that God is now a different being from what he was before the atonement was made, and that he has been made mild and forgiving by the sacrifice on the cross.

Now, in opposition to these views, reflecting so much on the character of God, my text teaches that he was originally disposed to show mercy. His benevolence in the plan of salvation lies back of the gift of a Saviour, and prompted to it. It was love on the part of the eternal Father that led him to give his Son to die, no less than love on the part of the Son to come-and the one was no more purchased than the other. The gift of the Saviour was just the expression, or the exponent of that love; and the magnitude of the gift was the measure of the original love of God. As this idea is the essential thought in my text, and as the view which is taken of it will control all our views of the plan of salvation, I may be permitted to ask your attention to a remark or two to illustrate it.

(1.) We do not suppose that any change has been wrought in the character of God by the plan of salvation, or by the work of the atonement. We do not believe that any change could be produced in his character; we do not believe that it is desirable that there should be. We suppose that God was just as worthy of the love and confidence of his creatures before the atonement was

made as he is now, or ever will be; and that every attribute of his character was just as lovely then as it is now. He is no more merciful now than he was from all eternity; and he was no more stern in his character then than he is now, and always will be. The incorrigible and the finally impenitent sinner has no more reason to hope for exemption from deserved wrath now than he had before Christ came; and the angels in heaven gather around him with no more real confidence and love than they did before. The doctrine of the unchangeableness of God is the foundation of all our hopes; nor could the affairs of the universe move on one moment securely, unless it was exactly true that with God there is "no variableness or shadow of turning."

(2.) We suppose that God was originally so full of mercy, and so disposed to pardon sinners, that in order to do it he was willing to stoop to any sacrifice except that of truth and justice, and that therefore he sent his Son to die. The race was in fact lost and ruined. The world was full of sinners and full of sufferers. But we do not suppose that compassion towards them has been purchased, but that it was originally so great that he was willing to stoop to sacrifice in order to rescue and save them.-A father has a beloved son. He embarks on the ocean in the pursuits of commerce, and falls into the hands of an Algerine pirate. He is chained, and driven to the slave market, and sold, and conveyed over burning sands as a slave, and pines in hopeless bondage. The news of this reaches the ears of the father. will be his emotions? Will the sufferings of that son make a change in his character? If required, he would gather up his silver, and his gold, and his pearls, and leave his own home, and cross the ocean, and make his way over the burning sands, that he might find out and ransom the captive. But think you he would be a different man now from what he was? Has the captivity of that son made a change in him? No. His sufferings have called out the original tenderness of his bosom, and have merely developed what he was. He so loved that child that the forsaking of his own home, and the perils of the ocean, and the journey over burning sands, were regarded as of no consequence if he could seek out and

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save him. These sacrifices and toils would be trifles, if he might again press his lost son to his bosom, and restore him to his desolate home. It is the love-the strong original love in his bosom, that prompts to the sacrifice, and that makes toil and peril welcome. So of God. Such was his original love for man, that he was willing to stoop to any sacrifice to save him; and the gift of a Saviour was the mere expression of that love.

(3.) But now to make this case more analogous to the plan of salvation, and to show more of the real difficulty, suppose the rescue of that child should in some way involve the consequence of doing injustice to others. Suppose it should take the father away from his own family, and expose them to a similar danger. Suppose it should involve the necessity of his acknowledging the right of the captor, or in some way make it necessary to expose his own character to a charge of injustice, or of falsehood-the difficulty in the case would be vastly increased, and the strong love of the father would be more strikingly shown if he should seek to remove this difficulty at the same time that he should save his enslaved son. This was the great work which rendered the plan of salvation so difficult and so glorious. It was not merely to save man, but it was at the same time to save the character, and name, and government of God. It was to show that he was "just," though he "justified the ungodly;" and true, though the sinner should not die. It was to show his sense of the evil of sin, at the same time that he pardoned it; and his truth, at the same time that the threatened penalty was remitted. This could be done only by allowing his son to be treated as if he were a sinner, in order to treat the really guilty as if they were righteous; and so to identify the one with the other, that it might be adjudged that the law was as really satisfied as though they had themselves borne the penalty. It was not merely, therefore, the gift of a Saviour that was the expression of love, it was giving him so as to remove all the obstacles on his part to pardon, and making designed arrangements so as to preserve his own honor untarnished, and to secure the undiminished confidence of the universe.

The essential idea which I have now aimed to exhibit,