I HAD to cross a high mountain range in a distant land. It was early morning, and the rising sun had not yet dispersed the snow-white clouds that rolled beneath me, and which were pierced here and there by giant peaks that reared upward to the tropical sky. It was a most wonderful prospect, and a new and thrilling experience for me, but what moved me most, and left the deepest impression on my mind was a fountain of water, cool as the night and clear as crystal, that sprang up from the rock, thousands of feet above the sea, and went flowing down to the sun-parched plains beneath. As I stood in those glorious surroundings, the music of that fountain got into my soul, and I felt that I must sing, and so, raising my voice, I sang to the accompanying of the flowing waters, part of William Cowper’s hymn of praise to our great Saviour:
“E’er God had built the mountains
Or raised the fruitful hills,
Before He filled the fountains
That feed the running rills,
In Thee, from everlasting,
The wonderful I AM
Found pleasures never wasting,
And WISDOM is Thy Name.
“And couldst Thou be delighted
With creatures such as we?
Who, when we saw Thee, slighted
And nailed Thee to a tree!
Unfathomable wonder!
And mystery divine!
The voice that speaks in thunder
Says, ‘Sinner, I am thine!’”
AS I finished my song by that fountain above the clouds, I was moved to deeper praise for I thought of that greater fountain of blessing and life that is springing up and flowing forth to unhappy, sinful, thirsty, dying men. Where will you find it? If you would discover it, you must arise and travel in your search by Calvary and Bethlehem, you must pass upward above the clouds, you must go from earth to heaven and away into the heights of eternal glory—to the heart of the blessed God. Then, and not till then, will you reach the fountain, the source of blessing. It springs up in the very heart of God, for God is love. In those three words we are told what God is in the absolute perfection of His eternal Being. But what is that to us, unless His love can reach us in blessing? And how can it do that? We are sinners, which is only another name for rebels; we were guilty and dead towards God; no pulse of love stirred in our souls towards Him; we had turned every one to his own way, and gone so far from Him that we needed only to take one more step and our souls had been plunged into hopeless and everlasting perdition. What could God’s love do for us, and how could He show it to us? The answer comes as clear as human words, divinely chosen, can state it. “In this is manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him.” But can God love sinful men, who never loved Him, and yet maintain His holiness?
And if He does love them and shows it, what of His eternal justice, upon which the pillars of His moral universe are founded? Again there comes the answer, sure and sufficient, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:8, 9, 108He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 9In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:8‑10)).
Burdened and weary sinner, unsatisfied and thirsting, be glad and rejoice, that, though you have not loved God, He has loved you; and though you have not sought Him, He has sought you. He has anticipated your deep need, and has taken the only way by which you could be saved, to save you. Ponder my text again. For, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Begin at the source of it, and track the way that the love of God has taken to reach you; see Him who was in the form of God descending from His high glory to earth; pause for a moment at the manger in Bethlehem, and join your adoration there with the worship of the shepherds from the hills, for the Babe before whom they bow is Emmanuel, the only begotten Son of God-given for the world. Travel further, for Jesus must go further if we were to be saved from perishing; keep His company as He moves amid the miseries of men, rising up day by day before the sun, to be ready to heal their sicknesses and assuage their sorrows; travel with Him through Gethsemane; it is a rough way for His feet to go, but He does not refuse to tread it, see Him move onward with steadfast face, despised and rejected of men, spit upon, scourged and crowned with thorns; follow Him through the gates of David’s city as He bears His cross to Calvary. Do not stand with the mocking multitude lest you partake of their spirit, but with the mother of Jesus, and His mother’s sister, and Mary Magdalene, out of whom He cast seven devils, and the disciple whom Jesus loved; you will be in good company if you stand with them to “Behold the Lamb of God” crucified for a world of sinners.
You have yet to learn the meaning of it, you have yet to learn why the giving of God’s only begotten Son should have meant sorrow and sacrifice and death for Him, and salvation and life for you; but it was only on this road that the love of God could reach you. He had loved the world in vain apart from this.