But remember, I beseech you, that this love of God is explained by our Apostle to be ‘in Christ Jesus our Lord.’  Love illimitable, all-pervasive, eternal; yes, but a love which has a channel and a course; love which has a method and a process by which it pours itself over the world.  It is not, as some representations would make it, a vague, nebulous light diffused through space as in a chaotic half-made universe, but all gathered in that great Light which rules the day—­even in Him who said:  ‘I am the Light of the world.’  In Christ the love of God is all centred and embodied, that it may be imparted to all sinful and hungry hearts, even as burning coals are gathered on a hearth that they may give warmth to all that are in the house.  ’God so loved the world’—­not merely so much, but in such a fashion—­’that’—­that what?  Many people would leap at once from the first to the last clause of the verse, and regard eternal life for all and sundry as the only adequate expression of the universal love of God.  Not so does Christ speak.  Between that universal love and its ultimate purpose and desire for every man He inserts two conditions, one on God’s part, one on man’s.  God’s love reaches its end, namely, the bestowal of eternal life, by means of a divine act and a human response.  ’God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’  So all the universal love of God for you and me and for all our brethren is ’in Christ Jesus our Lord,’ and faith in Him unites us to it by bonds which no foe can break, no shock of change can snap, no time can rot, no distance can stretch to breaking.  ’For I am persuaded, 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.’

THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY

’I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.’—­ROMANS xii. 1.

In the former part of this letter the Apostle has been building up a massive fabric of doctrine, which has stood the waste of centuries, and the assaults of enemies, and has been the home of devout souls.  He now passes to speak of practice, and he binds the two halves of his letter indissolubly together by that significant ‘therefore,’ which does not only look back to the thing last said, but to the whole of the preceding portion of the letter.  ’What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’  Christian living is inseparably connected with Christian believing.  Possibly the error of our forefathers was in cutting faith too much loose from practice, and supposing that an orthodox