Everlasting Love
“I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore tvith loving-liinduess have I drawn thee!” — Jee. xxxi. 3.
Believer! art thou tempted now to douLt His love? Are His footsteps lost amid the nightshadows through which He is now conducting thee? Remember He had His eye upon thee before the birth of time; yea, from all eternity! What appears to thee now some sudden capricious exercise of His power or sovereignty, is the determination and decree of “” everlasting love.” *I loved thee,’ He seems to say, Suffering one, into this affliction; I will love thee through it; and when My designs regarding thee are completed, I will shew thee that the love which is “from everlasting, is to everlasting I”
Child of God! If there bo a ripple now
EVErvLASTING LOVE. 89
agitating the surface of the stream, trace it up to this fountain-head of love. God is faithfal. He cannot deny Himself. He must have some wise end to subserve, if some dark clouds are now intercepting these gracious beams. “For a small moment I have forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee,’saith the Lord thy Redeemer. For this is as the waters of Koah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of N’oah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn tlrat I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee” (Isa. liv. 7-10).
God sets His Bow in the dark sky; and as
if it were not enough that His ‘peoile should
look upon it and take comfort in its many and
varied promises, — He Himself graciously be-
90 THE BOW m TnE CLOUD.
conies a party in gazing on the covenant pledge; — “J[?ic? the Bow shall he in the cloud, AND I SHALL LOOK UPON IT, that I may remember the everlasting covenant T (Gen. ix. IG.) He puts Himself (so to speak) in mind of His own everlastino: love! In His Saints’ dark and cloudy day, wken they imagine that their eyes are alone resting on the tokens of covenant faithfulness, the eye of a covenant-keeping God is resting upon them too. ‘I will look upon my own Promises,’ He seems to say. ‘They shall be memorials to Myself of My purposes of unchanging mercy’ Nor is this love merely a general indiscriminate affection. The motto- verse speaks of each individual member of the Covenant family — “/ have hvedlR’EE,!” “0 my Father,” says Madam Guyon, “it seems to me sometimes as if Thou didst forget every other being in order to think only of my faithless and ungrateful heart.”
Let us seek to view our trials as so many cords of loving kindness, by which our God is seeking to dra’v us, yea, and will draw us nearer Himself. Who knows what mercy may be bound iip in what may seem to us dark and mysterious dispensations? We are apt to misname and misinterpret His ways. IVe call His dealings severe trials. He calls them ‘^ loving-kindnesses.”
Drooping saint! let thine eyes rest on the Rainbow over-arching the Throne of God, spanning from eternity to eternity; and read for thy comfort the gracious declaration —” The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him