“I used to think,” said David Steven, Bower, “that the love of God was procured by the work of Christ, but, oh! but the view I got that day [as he listened to a sermon by Rev. Alexander Gunn, Watten, on John iii. 16] of the love of the Father from eternity, and that it was because of that love that the Saviour was sent into the world. My heart was filled and melted with a sense of God’s love to lost and guilty sinners in giving His only begotten Son for their salvation. How I longed, when the congregation broke up, to get home that I might find a secret place in which to give vent to my feelings; and when I did reach my own dwelling, I could not well contain, but felt as if my bodily frame could not hold such measure as I had received, and went stumbling over what lay in my way into the barn, and there poured out my heart in adoration of the Lord’s love and mercy, and I had there a sweet word of promise given me—”Behold I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it” (Rev. iii. 8). Many a miserable and perplexing time has gone over my head since then, but that was a time I can never forget.”
“Albeit that grace is perfectly free to men, in pardoning and saving of them; yet justice must be satisfied, and Christ was abated nothing.”—Elisha Coles.