Believe me, you could have no better charm to keep you safe through, the temptations of the coming half year, than this most true persuasion that God loves you.  The oldest and the youngest of us may alike repeat to himself the blessed words, “God loves me;” “God loves me; God has redeemed me:  God would dwell in my heart, that I might dwell in him:  God has placed me in his church, has made me a member of Christ his own Son, has made me an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.”  I might multiply words, but that one little sentence is, perhaps, more than all, “God loves me.”  Oh that you would believe him when he assures you of it, for then surely you would not fail to love him.  But whether you believe it or not, still it is so:  God loves every one of us; he loves each one of us as belonging to Christ his Son.  He does love each, of us; let us not cast his love away from us, and refuse to love him in return; he does love each of us now, but there may be a time to each of us,—­there will be, assuredly, if we will not believe that he loves us, when he will love us no more for ever.

LECTURE XXXVII.

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EZEKIEL xx. 49.

Then said I, Ah, Lord God I they say of me, Doth he not speak parables?

Nothing is more disheartening, if we must believe it to be true, than the language in which some persons talk of the difficulty of the Scriptures, and the absolute certainty that different men will ever continue to understand them differently.  It is not, we are told, with the knowledge of Scripture as with that of outward nature:  in the knowledge of nature, discoveries are from time to time made which set error on the one side, and truth on the other, absolutely beyond dispute; there the ground when gained is clearly seen to be so; and as fresh sources of knowledge are continually opening to us, it is not beyond hope that we may in time arrive infinitely near to the enjoyment of truth,—­truth certain in itself, and acknowledged by all unanimously.  But with Scripture, it is said, the case is far otherwise; discoveries are not to be expected here, nor does a later generation derive from, its additional experience any greater insight into the things of God than was enjoyed by the generations before it.  And when we see that actually the complete Scriptures have been in the world not much less than eighteen hundred years; that within that period no other book has been so much studied; and yet that differences of opinion as to the matters spoken of in it have ever existed, and exist now as much as ever, what reasonable prospect is there, it is asked, of future harmony or of clearer demonstrations of divine truth; and will not the good on these points ever continue to differ from the good, and the wise to differ from the wise?