p. 43 | REDEEMING LOVE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 10, 1876

REDEEMING LOVE.

Love is diffusive. It would not confine its offices to those only who could repay them; bursting the limits of the church, it would seek the world. Every heart in which it glowed, finding itself allied to every other Christian heart, and the whole feeling themselves reinforced with the benevolence of Heaven, would meditate the conversion of the world. As often as they approached the throne of grace, they would find themselves touching the springs of universal and almighty love,—and would they not yearn to behold these springs in activity for the world? As often as the thought of that love embracing themselves, their own love would burn with tenfold, fervor; the selfishness of their nature would be consumed, the most enlarged designs of benevolence would seem too small, the most costly sacrifices too cheap; they would feel as if they must precipitate themselves into some boundless field of beneficence; as if they could only breathe and act in a sphere which knows no circumference. As often as they surveyed their infinite resources in Christ, and perceived that when all their own necessities were supplied those resources were infinite still, they would naturally remember the exigencies of others; would feel that they had access to the whole, that they might instrumentally impart of that abundance to others. The feast would be prepared, the provisions infinite; and when they were seated at the banquet, and contrasted that plenitude of food with the fewness of the guests, they would conceive a fixed determination not to cease inviting till all the world should be sitting with them at the feast of salvation.

The name they were to bear would perpetually remind them of Him from whom they had derived it; and would it be possible for them to have their minds inhabited by the glorious idea of Christ without receiving corresponding impressions of greatness? It would be associated in their minds with all things great, beneficent, godlike, impelling them to imitate to the utmost his diffusive goodness. But not only their name, from him they would have derived their nature; by necessity of nature, therefore, they would pant to behold universal happiness. Not only would they feel that every accession to their number was an increase of their happiness; as long as the least portion of the world remained unblessed and unsaved, they would feel that their happiness was incomplete. Nothing less than the salvation of the whole world would be regarded by them as the complement of their number, the fulfillment of their office, the consummation of their joy.

It is clear, then, that the entire economy of salvation is constructed on the principle of restoring to the world the lost spirit of love; this is its boast and glory. Its advent was an era in the universe. It was bringing to a trial the relative strength of love and hatred;—the darling principle of Heaven and the great principle of all revolt and sin. It was confronting selfishness in its own native region with a system of benevolence prepared, as its avowed antagonist, by the hand of God itself, so that, unless we would impugn the skill and power of its Author, we must suppose that it was studiously adapted for the lofty encounter. With this conviction, therefore, we should have been justified in saying, had we been placed in a situation to say it, “Nothing but the treachery of its professed friends can defeat it; if they attempt a compromise with the spirit of selfishness, there is everything to be feared; but let the heavenly system be worked fairly, and there is everything to be expected,—its triumph is certain.”

But has its object been realized? More than eighteen hundred years have elapsed since it was brought into operation,—has its design succeeded? Succeeded! Alas! the question seems a taunt, a mockery. We pass, in thought, from the picture we have drawn of what the gospel was intended to effect, to the contemplation of things as they are, and the contrast appalls us. We lift our eyes from the picture, and, like a person awaking from a dream of happiness to find the cup of wretchedness in his hand, the pleasing vision has fled. Selfishness is everywhere rife and rampant.—Mammon.