"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." We cannot fathom this love; it is deeper than all depths. There is nothing on earth with which we can compare it; its faintest image is that love which the mother has for her child. The love of an earthly parent for her child is often intense; and so pure, so comparatively unselfish, is the love of a mother for her child, that it has been used as a simile of the divine love. Yet the love of a mother may intermit; "she may forget;" but the love of the Lord never forgets us. Our holiest and purest affections are, therefore, first due to the Lord our Saviour, whom to love, we must love with all the heart, the soul, the strength, from the first moment of our reasonable existence to its final issue in this world; and then, freed from the cumbrous load of humanity, in a spiritual body we shall rise to a higher sphere, and love with a purer and more fervid affection.
And to whom better can we devote our affections than to our God and Father, who is also our Saviour and Friend, Infinitely wise! in Him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Wonderful in His creative power! the perfection and symmetry of Divine beauty is stamped upon every object that meets our reflective gaze. The only Counsellor whose instructions are infallible; the only guide who, never misleads; the only Truth in which no error can be detected; and the source alone of that life by which we all live, and move, and are. He must be our first and last in all things.
Are we ready to worship in the beauty of holiness? It must be to Jesus, our Lord and our God, that we reverently kneel. Do we, with gratitude, acknowledge
