Now what is this everlasting life of God, which the Lord Jesus Christ lived perfectly, and which He can and will make every one of us live, in proportion as we give up our hearts and wills to Him, and ask Him to take charge of us, and shape us, and teach us?  When we read that blessed story of Him who was born in a stable, and laid in a manger, who went about doing good, because God was with Him, who condescended of His own freewill to be mocked, and scourged, and spit upon, and crucified, that He might take away the sins of the whole world, who prayed for His murderers, and blest those who cursed Him—­what sort of life does this life of God, which He lived, seem to us?  Is it not a life of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, patience, meekness?  Surely it is; then that is the likeness of God.  God is love.  And the Lord Jesus’ life was a life of love—­utter, perfect, untiring love.  He did His Father’s will perfectly, because He loved men perfectly, and to the death.  He died for those who hated Him, and so He showed forth to man the name and glory of God; for God is love.  The name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is love; for love is justice and righteousness, as it is written, ’Love worketh no ill to his neighbour:  therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.’  And God is perfect love, because He is perfect righteousness; and perfect righteousness, because He is perfect love; for His love and His justice are not two different things, two different parts of God, as some say, who fancy that God’s justice had to be satisfied in one way, and His love in another, and talk of God as if His justice fought against His love, and desired the death of a sinner, and then His love fought against His justice, and desired to save a sinner.  No wonder that those who hold such doctrines go further still, and talk as if God the Father desired to destroy mankind, and would have done it if God the Son had not interposed, and suffered Himself instead; till they can fancy that they are Christians, and know God, while they use the hideous words of a certain hymn, which speaks of

’The streaming drops of Jesu’s blood
Which calmed the Father’s frowning face.’

May God deliver and preserve us and our children from all such blasphemous fables, which, like the fables of the old heathen, change the glory of the Incorruptible God into the likeness of a corruptible man, which deny the true faith, that God has neither parts nor passions, by talking of His love and His justice as two different things; which confound His persons by saying that the Son alone does what the Father and the Holy Spirit do also, while they divide His substance by making the will of the Son different from the will of the Father, and deny that such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost, all three one perfect Love, and one perfect Justice, because they are all three one God, and God is love, and love is righteousness.