EXTRACT FROM A DIARY OF THE LATE REV. JOHN ROSS,
BRUCEFIELD, ONTARIO.
FRIDAY, March 1st, 1872.—About family worship time last night, and after reading a chapter of the Song of Solomon, felt and pleaded for a manifestation of Christ’s love to be made to the Church. What a change it would make in her whole spirit and happiness and labours were He to manifest to her His own love if her ear be but opened to hear His voice and her eye opened to see His glory, and her heart be turned to Him and opened to receive His love, and she as a new being—a new power in the earth. She will be as if she had risen from the dead.
What can be done as means to secure this (1) Prayer must be offered up for it. It is God alone who can make this communication to her, and He is the Hearer of prayer. (2) The love of Christ must be preached as it is set forth in the Gospel of the grace of God. (3) The mind of the Church must be turned away from the things which stand in the way of Christ’s love, which preoccupy her mind and draw aside her affections, and keep out the love of Christ. Read the message sent to David, and the prayer which he founded on it in II. Sam. vii., and then the prayer of Solomon in I. Kings viii.
(4) The manifestation and communication of Christ’s love to the Church must be sought of God in prayer, as Paul does in Eph. iii.—“For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in
the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.
(2) The love of Christ must be preached as it is preached by His Spirit in the Scriptures. It is a fact, it is true, it is a settled reality placed by His own Word past all doubt that Christ loved and continues without change or abatement to love the Church. Why, then, should not she rejoice in this glorious fact, and count on it and prize it according to its value, and adopt the course which He points out to her to pursue in order to enjoy it fully? What can the things which she is pursuing do for her in comparison with His love? What can all the world, sin and Satan, do for her as a compensation for the loss of His love?
In preaching the love of Christ special prominence must be given to His incarnation and death, as is done in the Scriptures. And to the blessings which come to us from His death, the forgiveness of sins, peace with God, the enjoyment of His favour, the destruction of Satan’s power, and deliverance from his thraldom, victory over the world, over death, and the grave, the enjoyment of God’s Spirit.
In preaching the love of Christ, care should be taken to speak of it as the love of a living person, and not separate the historic events from the Person who now lives and acts and cherishes the same love which moved Him to lay down His life. The sun was made long ago, but it is as useful now as in the first day it began to shine, and as necessary. And its light is as pleasant and bright and young every morning as when it first rose upon the earth, and is it less with the love of Christ?