God be praised! it has also broken our hard and obdurate hearts, and notwithstanding our resistance, has forced us into the bonds of the covenant! God be thanked for ever, we have ourselves experienced, that his love is strong as death! Who can resist it?

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Does not death separate

No

Love is strong as death. man from this world and its concerns? Does it not snatch him away from all that is earthly and transitory? And behold, the love of Christ does the same. sooner is its influence felt upon the soul-no sooner are we participatingly assured of its possession, and able to say with Paul: I also have obtained mercy-than we bid the world farewell; its pleasures become embittered, its waters turbid and vapid; for we now drink from other fountains; and in places where we were formerly at home, we now feel ourselves strangers, uneasy and oppressed. Oh, how wonderful the change which passes on the heart, as soon as it hears the Lord call it by name, and the words, Thou art mine!' vibrate within it. Then a Magdalene quickly casts away her follies, and becomes the handmaid of the Lord. Then a Paul esteems all that he had accounted gain, as loss and dung, and is Christ's alone. Then we willingly abandon honor and pleasure, fame, applause, and whatever else the world has to offer, and follow Christ. Yes, the love of Jesus is strong as death. Wherever it is unfolded, felt and experienced, it separates the man, heart and soul, from the world and its trifles. Then Abraham can no longer dwell in Ur, Lot in Sodom, nor Moses at the court of Egypt. The heart pants, and struggles to be liberated; we weigh the anchor and launch from the shore of this world. The love of Jesus

is strong as death. With the destructive energy of death, and as the fire of lightning, it assails the old man within us. Where the love of Jesus is perceived, and his grace experienced, there also is a constant inward dying, an incessant consuming; there the old Adam lies in the flames that will burn him to ashes. Oh, it is hard to confess, that our sins have caused the Lord of Glory to shed his blood upon the cross-that our sins have occasioned all his humiliation and suffering! How inconceivably mortifying is the conviction, that we must be received to his arms and to his love, as the vilest of sinners! it degrades us in the dust of self-abasement, and overwhelms us with shame and disgrace; while it renders a life after the flesh distasteful and disgusting. With the consciousness: I have obtained mercy; pride cannot rear its head; avarice cannot thrive; lust cannot spring up; that is impossible; for where the love of Christ takes possession of the soul, there it is as death, destructive as the fire of brimstone, and pestilence, to the old man.

III.—And behold, to the strength of death, the love of Christ to sinners unites the firmness of hell.* Its fervor, says the Shulamite, is unchanging as the grave; and our hearts should gratefully respond- God be praised!' The Shulamite speaks with force and power, but with truth and beauty. It is as she has said. The love of Jesus to the elect is a zealous, ardent, yea, and a jealous

* This is a literal rendering of the author's words, who has of course followed the idea conveyed by Luther's translating the word

p by firm,' which is, perhaps, more correct than cruel,' as the English version has it.-ED

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love. It encircles its object with a firmness so immoveable and undeviating, that the idea of surrender on its part, is as little to be entertained as that of a surrender of the lost on the part of hell. Though on earth Satan must renounce his prey at the bidding of the Lion of the tribe of Judah; but if he have dragged it down into the bottomless pit, the gates are closed, and none shall open them. Hell asserts its rights and its possessions. No sighs, no grief, can move it ; no tears, or lamentations of the damned; it holds them in its gloomy caverns with stern, inexorable cruelty, and the smoke of their torments ascends for ever and ever. And such is the constancy of the love of Christ. The Lord Jesus keeps what he has. My sheep are mine' he says, and none shall pluck them out of my hand.' Should the devil, the accuser, appear, and claim the sinner as his own; should he heap every deadly sin upon his head; should Moses arise, and call upon the Lord to condemn the despiser of his laws; should even the angels of God cry together, Away with him! the thief is not fit for Paradise!-what could it avail? For if he has once taken the sinner to his heart, his love is firm as hell. And whether it were Satan, Moses, or the angels, his answer would be,: Away with you all.' I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. His love is an unyielding love it never relinquishes what it has once adopted. It turned the lost son from the husks of the swine-troughs, from the seat of the scorner and the profane. It followed Solomon into the temples of Satan, into the assemblies of heathen women, and the dwellings of lewdness: yes, it pursued him even to the altars of strange gods, and rested not till it

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had reclaimed him. Such is the love of Christ! and it declares to Satan, I am stronger than thou art.' What it has it has, and never abandons. And if Satan assail the Bride, a conflict immediately ensues; which ceases not till the dragon is discomforted. Yes, the love of Christ for his people is firm and unrelenting as hell. I am persuaded,' says St. Paul, 'that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers; nor things present, nor things to come; nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'

Once more. The fervor of his love is firm as hell, and is mingled with a holy jealousy. Where is there a soul with whom he has deigned to hold converse, that has not experienced how jealous is his love? He will possess his people exclusively, not divided with another; he will not suffer his followers to adhere to Belial, and coquette with the world: therefore his efforts are incessant, and endlessly varied, till his Bride has cordially renounced the world, and is entirely his own. What has been our own experience, my brethren, when we have turned back into the world; when, fascinated by its charms, we have forgotten Him, or have attempted to associate Him with Belial; when our speech and our actions have faithlessly declared with Simon, I know not this man;' when closing our eyes and our hearts against him, we have again demeaned ourselves as men of this world? What were our sensations when reflection returned? Did not a day of sorrow and anguish, a day of storm and tempest, of darkness and gloom, break in upon the

soul? Our peace and joy had departed; we felt as though we had rejected his grace; and we began anxiously to inquire how we might appease the Lord! He seemed to have turned from us in anger, and our souls endured the torments of hell. Behold in this his jealousy and his displeasure! But, blessed be God, it is only the anger of love. His tenderness is wounded because we have left him, and because he has for a time been deprived of the joy of possessing us wholly and undivided. This pains and afflicts him. It provokes his love, and therefore his jealousy is kindled, and he plunges us down into hell. Into hell! Yes, the Lord sometimes conducts even his people into hell; but, God be praised, he does not leave them there.

IV. Strong as death is the love of Jesus. His jealousy is firm as hell; the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench it, neither can the floods drown it. By these words Shulamite describes the faithfulness of Christ, as opposed to our unfaithfulness. How different is it with our love towards each other, even when it is most sincere and pure; contrasted with the love of Christ, it is but as the glimmering of a torch, which but few waters would suffice to quench. The slightest degree of coldness or unrequited affection, the slightest offence or inconstancy on the part of those we love, is sufficient to estrange our hearts, and quench our love. Such floods it cannot survive. And how is it with our love to the Lord? Alas! if he do not continually quicken it, by fresh and sensible supplies of his grace, it is soon reduced to the faintest glimmer.

The