And, first of all, there is the certainty about God’s heart.  Everywhere else we have only peradventures, hopes, fears, guesses more or less doubtful, and roundabout inferences as to His disposition and attitude towards us.  As one of the old divines says somewhere, ’All other ways of knowing God are like the bended bow, Christ is the straight string.’  The only means by which, indubitably, as a matter of demonstration, men can be sure that God in the heavens has a heart of love towards them is by Jesus Christ.  For consider what will make us sure of that.  Nothing but facts; words are of little use, arguments are of little use.  A revelation, however precious, which simply says to us, ‘God is Love’ is not sufficient for our need.  We want to see love in operation if we are to be sure of it, and the only demonstration of the love of God is to witness the love of God in actual working.  And you get it—­where?  On the Cross of Jesus Christ.  I do not believe that anything else irrefragably establishes the fact for the yearning hearts of us poor men who want love, and yet cannot grope our way in amidst the mysteries and the clouds in providence and nature, except this—­’Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.’

The question may arise in some minds, Is there any need for proving God’s love?  The question never arose except within the limits of Christianity.  It is only men who have lived all their lives in an atmosphere saturated by Christian sentiment and conviction that ever come to the point of saying, ’We do not want historical revelation to prove to us the fact of a loving God.’  They would never have fancied that they did not need the revelation unless, unconsciously to themselves, and indirectly, all their thoughts had been coloured and illuminated by the revelation that they profess they reject.  God as Love is ‘our dearest faith, our ghastliest doubt,’ and the only way to make absolutely certain of the fact that His heart is full of mercy to us is to look upon Him as He stands revealed to us, not merely in the words of Christ, for, precious as they are, these are the smallest part of His revelation, but in the life and in the death which open for us the heart of God.  Remember what He said Himself, not ‘He who hath listened to Me, doth understand the Father,’ but ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.’  ‘In Him is yea,’ and the hopes and shadowy fore-revelations of the loving heart of God are confirmed by the fact of His life and death.  God establishes, not ‘commends’ as our translation has it, ’His love towards us in that whilst we were yet sinners Christ died for us.’