Oh, my friends, dull indeed must be our hearts if we can feel no love for the God of whom the Gospel speaks!  And perverse, indeed, must be our minds if we can twist the good news of Christ’s salvation into the bad news of condemnation!  What says St. Paul,—­That God is against us?  No.  But—­’If God be for us, who can be against us?

’Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect?  It is God that justifieth.  Who is he that condemneth?  It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for as.

’Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

’As it is written, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

’Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.

’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.’

What says St. John?  Does he say that God the Father desires to punish or slay us; and that our Lord Jesus Christ, or the Virgin Mary, or the saints, or any other being, loves us better than God, and will deliver us out of the hands of God?  God forbid!  ’We have known and believed,’ he says, ’the love that God hath to us.  God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.’

My friends, if we could believe those blessed words—­I do not say in all their fulness—­we shall never do that, I believe, in this mortal life—­but if we could only believe them a little, and know and believe even a little of the love that God has to us, then love to Him would spring up in our hearts, and we should feel for Him all that child ever felt for father.  If we really believed that God who made heaven and earth was even now calling to each and every one of us, and beseeching us, by the sacrifice of His well-beloved Son, crucified for us, ‘My son, give Me thy heart,’ we could not help giving up our hearts to Him.

Provided—­and there is that second reason why people do not love God, for which I said there was no excuse—­provided only that we wish to be good, and to obey God.  If we do not wish to do what God commands, we shall never love God.  It must be so.  There can be no real love of God which is not based upon a love of virtue and goodness, upon what our Lord calls a hunger and thirst after righteousness.  ’If ye love Me, keep My commandments,’ is our Lord’s own rule and test.  And it is the only one possible.  If we habitually disobey any person, we shall cease to love that person.  If a child is in the habit of disobeying its parents, dark and angry feelings towards those parents are sure to arise in its heart.