Jesus was inseparable love

JESUS WAS INSEPARABLE LOVE
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
Romans 8:39 39neitherheight nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation, will be able to separateus from the
love of God that is in ChristJesus our LORD.
GreatTexts of the Bible
An Inseparable Love
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, norprincipalities,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 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.—Romans 8:38-39.
1. We always think of this chapter as St. Paul’s finest composition, and
perhaps the most precious legacywhich he bequeathed to the Church. It is a
noble piece of literary work, full of choice language and deep philosophic
thought. As a picture of the Christian life and its possessions andhopes, it
reaches a sublime elevationwhich is nowhere else attainedexcept in the lofty
sayings of Jesus. And the best of it is kept to the last. The climax and
peroration are where they ought to be. They form the grand Hallelujah
Chorus which brings the oratorio to a close.
A greatFrench critic remarks upon St. Paul’s indifference to style, the rough,
rugged sentencesofthe Apostle, with their abrupt transitions, their lack of

grace and finish, falling gratingly on the Frenchman’s sensitive ear. And no
reader of St. Paul’s writings will challenge the truth of this criticism, for there
is absolutely nothing of the conscious rhetoricianabout him; he is too intent
upon pouring out his mind and heart, too eagerto get into direct, living
contactwith men, to think of eleganceofstyle. But, now and again, when he
becomes impassioned, whenin the progress ofargument or exhortation some
of the grander truths of life, or some of its vivifying hopes, come pressing
upon him, then the preacher, the expounder, the controversialist, the
counsellor, the pastor, becomes a seer. Brain and heart getting on fire, the
thoughts that come, come molten, and fashion themselves naturally, without
any need of art, into forms of beauty; and so we have his hymn to Charity, his
ode to Immortality, and here his pæan to Love Divine.
2. These rapturous words are the climax of the Apostle’s long demonstration
that the Gospelis the revelationof “the righteousness which is of God by
faith,” and is thereby “the powerof God unto salvation.” What a contrast
there is betweenthe beginning and the end of this argument! It started with
sombre, sad words about man’s sinfulness and aversionfrom the knowledge
of God. It closes withthis sunny outburst of triumph. Like some streamrising
among black and barren cliffs, or melancholy moorlands, and foaming
through narrow rifts in gloomy ravines, it reaches atlast fertile lands, and
flows calm, the sunlight dancing on its broad surface, till it loses itselfat last in
the unfathomable oceanof the love of God.
What we have before us is, first of all, love—a love which brings us into
indissoluble union with God in Christ; it is called“the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus ourLord.” Next, we have a rapid list of the forces in the universe
which might be conceivedcapable of separating us from that love. And then
we have the persuasionwhich prevails above them all. The persuasionis
mentioned first, but it may be taken last, as it closes the greatargument.

A Love that will not let go.
Powers that are Powerless.
A Persuasionthat Prevails.
I
A Love that will not let go
i. The Love of God
“Who shall separate us from the love of God?”
1. “The love of God” may mean our love to God or God’s love to us: which
does St. Paul mean? He certainly means God’s love to us: “Who shall separate
us from the love of God?” In the argument of this Epistle the reality of God’s
love is confidently assumed. St. Paul was no shallow optimist, easily contented
with the colourand glitter of the surface of things; he recognizedas frankly
and vividly as any pessimist cando the dark enigmas of nature and life; yet,
notwithstanding this recognition, the fact of God’s love is the fundamental
article of his creed. Whatever may perplex him, he never suspects that the
cosmic trouble may arise in some defectof this love; in his convictionit is the
primary, centraltruth of the universe.

Readers ofMatthew Arnold will remember that in his essayon St. Paul he
interprets our text as if the Apostle were exulting in his own love of God
instead of God’s love of him; exulting in a love proceeding from himself
instead of a love which found him and carried him awaywith it. It shows
almost as strange a lack of insight as does the same writer’s conceptionof the
God of Israelas an impersonal force. The secretofSt. Paul’s calm outlook
and triumphant hope, the power that enabled him to rise above all evil and
fear of evil was, mostassuredly, not his own love of God, but God’s love of
him. The greatsaints of the Church have never thought much of their own
love of God. It is His love of them and their fellows—a love greaterthan their
hearts—thatpossessedthem. “I think I am the poorestwretch that lives,” said
the dying Cromwell; “but I love God, or rather (correcting myself) I am loved
of God.”
I love; but ah! the whole
Of love is but my answer, Lord, to Thee.
Lord Thou wert long beforehand with my soul,
Always Thou lovedst me.
In his ReminiscencesofFrederick DenisonMaurice the late Mr. Haweis
relates this incident: “I remember asking him one day, ‘How are we to know
when we have gothold of God? because sometimes we seemto have got a real
hold of Him, whilst at other times we can realize nothing.’ He lookedat me
with those eyes which so often seemedto be looking into an eternity beyond,
whilst he said in his deep and tremulously earnestvoice, ‘You have not got
hold of God, but He has gothold of you.’ ”

Niagara stoppedonce!Owing to an ice dam thrown across the river the
waters failed, the rainbow melted, the vast music was hushed. But there has
been no moment in which the love of God has failed towardthe rational
universe, when its eternal music has been broken, or the rainbow has ceased
to span the throne. There never will be such a moment. The crystal tide flows
richly, and flows for ever.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson]
Let me no more my comfort draw
From my frail hold of Thee;
In this alone rejoice with awe,—
Thy mighty graspof me.
Thy purpose of eternal good
Let me but surely know;
On this I’ll lean, let changing mood
And feeling come and go:

Glad when Thy sunshine fills my soul,
Nor lorn when clouds o’ercast,
Since Thou within Thy sure control
Of love dost hold me fast.
2. But the love of God to us carries with it our love to God. Without a response
to God’s love how can we be persuadedof it? As God’s love to us is rich and
everlasting, surviving all variations of time and circumstance, we will respond
to His love with a love as like His own as it is possible for the creature to give.
Mutuality is of the essence oflove. We have thinkers who recommend the
substitution of nature for God. They assure us that when we properly know
the universe we can regardit with awe and fear, with admiration and love.
Nature is infinitely interesting, infinitely beautiful; there is food for
contemplation which never runs short; it gives continually exquisite pleasure,
and the arresting and absorbing spectacle,so fascinating by its variety, is at
the same time overwhelming by its greatness andglory. But reciprocity is
surely of the essenceoflove; and howeverwe admire, love, and praise the
creation, it cannotreturn our affection. We smile upon it, yet there is no
answering flash; we extol it, but find no sympathetic response;appreciation
passes into adoration, and still our worship is unrequited. We see the folly of
falling in love with a statue, notwithstanding its beauty; and nature is that
statue. “They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see
not; they have ears, but they hear not; noses have they, but they smell not;
neither speak they through their throat.” In nature-worship, as in all idol-
worship, mutuality is not possible;all thought and feeling, confidence and
sacrifice are on one side. But with God in Christ fellowshipbecomes a fact. He
declares His love to the race most convincingly, and we love Him because He

first loved us. He stretches forth His hand out of heaven, we clasp it;
henceforth we are inseparable, no fortune or misfortune canunclench the
grip. The love of the Eternal is one link of gold, our love to Him is another,
and togetherthey bind us to His throne for ever.
For though “The love of God is broader than
The measure of man’s mind,” yet all in vain
The broad sun shines apace for him who hath
No window to his house; and human love
Must make an easternoutlook for the soul
Ere it cansee the dawn. He cannot dream
Of oceans who hath never seena pool.1 [Note:Anna Bunston, The Porch of
Paradise, 8.]
Cynics speak scornfully of love; yet we may remember that it is the sublime
element in our nature which most clearlyreflects the Divine and Eternal. It
sets at naught all the categoriesoftime and sense, and identifies us with the
infinite and timeless. It is indifferent to environment. It does not rise and fall
with the fortune of the beloved, as the quicksilver in the glass responds to the

weather;it is delightfully unconscious of secularvicissitude. It is unaffected by
distance:
Mountains rise and oceans roll
To sever us in vain.
Duration does not weakenit. On receipt of his mother’s portrait Cowper
wrote: “It is fifty-two years since I saw her last, but I have never ceasedto
love her.” Fifty-two centuries would not have chilled his affection. Deathdoes
not quench love. In Pompeii they showedme the bone of a human finger with
the ring still upon it: fine symbol of the immortality of love and loyalty!
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compasscome;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
ii. In Christ Jesus
“Which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

1. St. Paul does not find the proof of God’s love and the justification of ours in
nature, history, or life. The love of God in creationis in eclipse, orat leastin
partial eclipse;and if we are to construe the Divine characterfrom the facts of
nature, we must hesitate and fear. The light is not clear, and thinkers are
sorelypuzzled. Here, then, comes in the missionof the Christian Church—to
affirm the love of God in Christ Jesus to all mankind. The justification of an
absolute confidence in God’s unfailing love is found not in the sphere of
nature, but in the sphere of redemption. The austere science ofour day has
put entirely out of court the rosy philosophy of the old deism. It annihilates
sentiment; it will have none of it. If men are now to admire, reverence, and
love God, they must find another basis than nature for their worship. There is
none other except redemption; more than ever is the world shut up to that
glorious fact. It is enough. Here the eternallove blazes out with irresistible
demonstration. We cannot deny it, we cannot doubt it. “Herein is love, not
that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the propitiation
for our sins.” “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his
life for us.”
To-day two great schools ofscientists seriouslydiffer in their interpretation of
the world. One holds that nature knows only force, selfishness, andviolence;
whilst the other, recognizing the large play of egotismand violence in the
evolution of things, discerns that sympathy and sacrifice are prominent facts
of the physical universe; the first denies love, the secondacknowledges it. The
contention betweenthe philosophers will go on interminably, for really they
are occupiedwith the diverse aspects ofa paradoxicalworld, the moral of
their controversybeing that love is not absentin the creation, but revealed
only partially, faintly, fitfully. In many creatures the evidences oflove are
conspicuous, in others there seems a denial of it. The delightful element is
unmistakable in doves, butterflies, nightingales, and a thousand more lovely
things; it is painfully lacking in hawks, sharks, crocodiles,rattlesnakes, and
microbes. But men do not argue at noon whether the sun shines or not; and in
the presence ofCalvary there is an end of all strife touching the nature of God

and the design of His government. Naturalismmay doubt God’s love, may
deny it, but at the Cross we no longer guess and fear. He who died for us loves
us, whateverenigmas may mock. We see the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ—the face marred more than any man’s. What shall separate us from
the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord?1 [Note:W. L. Watkinson.]
What is it to the circling hours,
The life they take or bring?
What is it to the winds and showers?
They know not anything.
But somehow, ere I am aware,
There comes a hush and thrill,
For all the sunshine and the air
A Presence seems to fill;
And from the sudden-opening sky,

A low Voice seems to say,
“I am the Resurrection, I
The Life, the Truth, the Way.
This Nature, which you idly blame,
Is but the robe I wear;
From Me the human spirit came,
And all its griefs I bear.
The smile whose light thou canst not see,
The grace that left thy side,
Though vanished from the earth, with Me
For ever they abide.”
With Him I cannot be at strife;

Then will I kneeland say,
“In love He gave me that sweetlife,
In love He took away.
And love’s unfailing life, in Him,
Outlasts this arching sky;
For worlds may waste and suns grow dim,
But love cannever die.”
2. God’s love is illimitable, all-pervasive, eternal; yes, but it is a love which has
a channel and a course;love which has a method and a process by which it
pours itself over the world. It is not, as some representations wouldmake it, a
vague, half-nebulous light diffused through space as in a chaotic, half-made
universe; but all is gathered in that greatLight which rules the day—even in
Him who said: “I am the Light of the World.” In Christ the love of God is all
centred and embodied, that it may be imparted to all sinful and hungry
hearts, even as burning coals are gatheredon a hearth that they may give
warmth to all who are in the house.

The love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord is the heart of the Christian Gospel.
It was what won the world at the beginning to the Christian obedience, and it
is what holds the world now and will hold it as long as there are sins to be
forgiven and hearts hungering for reconciliationwith God. It is independent
of much knowledge whichmay be discredited, and of much opinion which
may become a fashion of the past. Whateverelse which passes forChristianity
and is supposedin some wayto uphold it may decrease anddisappear, this
will increase and rise with purer and greaterbrightness upon the world.
Every one of our intellectual conceptions ofthe mystery of the Godhead, of
the Incarnation and the Atonement, may undergo a change, but the love
which spoke, and acted, and lived in Jesus Christ will always touch the human
heart with the deepestconvictionand assurance of the love of God, and be the
revelation and symbol of the Divine disposition towards the children of men.
Ideas and ideals do not manifest the love of God to men—only what God has
done shows that.1 [Note: Life of Principal Rainy, ii. 137.]
3. If we would know God and love Him, we must find Him in Christ, in that
PerfectMan—so strong and yet so gentle, so true, yet so tender—who moves
before us in the Gospels. Is it difficult to love Him? It is not difficult to admire
and praise Him. There is hardly a man in Christendom who does not do that.
Even those who rejectHis claim to be one with the Father, even those who
hold the Gospelto be but a late and imperfect tradition overlaid with many
incredible fables, even those whose keeneyes detectflaws in His characterand
teaching—eventhese admit that no man ever lived or spake like Him, that He
is beyond all rivalry, the wisestand best of the sons of men. It is easy, then, to
admire and praise Christ; but to love Him is not so easy;for that takes faith.
“Godso loved the world”—not merely so much, but in such a fashion—
“that”—thatwhat? Many people would leap at once from the first to the last
clause of the verse, and regardeternal life for all and sundry as the only

adequate expressionof the universal love of God. Notso does Christ speak.
BetweenI that universal love and its ultimate purpose and desire for every
man He inserts two conditions, one on God’s part, one on man’s God’s love
reaches its end, namely, the bestowalofeternal life, by means of a Divine act
and a human response. “Godso lovedthe world, that he gave his only
begottenSon, that whosoeverbelievethin him should not perish, but have
everlasting life.” So all the universal love of God for you and me and for all
our brethren is “in Christ Jesus our Lord,” and faith in Him unites us to it by
bonds which no foe canbreak, no shock ofchange can snap, no time can rot,
no distance can stretch to breaking.1 [Note:A. Maclaren.]
4. As we look at the love of God in Christ what do we find to be its most
striking characteristics?
(1) It was a universal love, including all, even the most unworthy, in its
embrace. It was not arrestedby the prejudices of His time, nor did it even
acknowledge theirpresence. It was not obsequious to the Pharisees, andcold
or suspicious to the publicans. None of the numerous parties which were then
struggling for ascendancyin Judea establishedthe slightestpreference to His
regard. None could allege that by His partiality for others He displayed a
proportionate indifference to them. Even that deep and almostimpassable
gulf betweenGentile and Jew closedup before Him. In Him love placed itself
at the disposalof every man without being deterred even by his sin. Indeed,
the greaterthe sin the more earnestlyit strove for a hearing. But its purpose
was always the same—to save us from what it knew to be our deadliestfoe,
and to win us to the cause ofholiness and truth. And it never despaired even
of the most abandoned, or allowedhim to go on to destruction because it was
impotent to help him.
(2) Another characteristicofthe love of God in Christ is that it issuedin the
most perfect actof self-sacrifice. Itis often said that love sets no limits to itself,

and this is true. It is the complete negationof selfishness.Whenit works it
imposes no restraints upon its efforts, for their cessationwould mean its own
cessationalso. Whenit forgives it forgives till seventytimes seven, and then
starts afresh. When it suffers there is no point at which it stops and refuses to
go further, for that would be to acknowledgeits own exhaustion. Now, in
Christ Jesus we see this love as it never had been seenon earth before. In Him
it shrank from no labour or humiliation. It carried Him from the cradle to the
cross without ever pausing or hesitating on the way. He left nothing undone
which might accomplishits purpose, and when the supreme act of obedience
was demanded He did not shrink. “The cup which my Father hath given me,
shall I not drink it?” Among His last words was a prayer for His murderers:
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” So “he loved us and
gave himself for us.” “Godcommendeth his love towardus, in that, while we
were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
(3) Another characteristicofthe love of God in Christ is that it invests us with
all it has. It not only spares nothing in effecting our salvationfrom sin, but it
enriches us with its whole possession. It is too frequently conceivedas having
exhausted itself in the great actof atonement, so that no surplus survives for
further use, or as though it had then completed its work and remains
henceforth in a state of quiescence. ButChrist gave Himself for us that He
might be able to give Himself to us—always the last ambition of love, short of
which it never rests. Hence He prayed for His disciples: that the love
wherewith His Father loved Him might be in them, and He in them. And St.
Paul prays that our knowledge ofthe love of Christ may lead to our being
“filled with all the fulness of God.”
(4) And, lastly, it follows from all this that the love of God which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord is a love which clings inseparably to its object. Whoever gives
himself wholly to another with a perfect knowledge and understanding of
what he is, can have no conceivable reasonforfinally renouncing him.
Nothing in his own nature can urge him to do so, for this is precluded by the

very fact of his self-surrender; and nothing in the personfor whom that
surrender has been made, for that has already been consideredand overcome.
So it is with the love of Christ. If it had stopped at any point short of a
complete sacrifice ofHimself, then it might, so to speak, have retracedits
steps. It would not have been irretrievably committed. But Christ has
committed Himself. He is pledged to go the whole length which our complete
salvationrequires. So that there can be nothing in Him which at any moment
can move Him to let us go. He has left Himself no place of repentance.
Passing the prison of one of our large cities early in the morning, I once saw
what seemedto be a mother in a humble cart from a distant village, waiting at
the entrance, for the release, perhaps of her son, that day from his term of
bondage. There were the vacantseatbeside her, the little basketof dainty
food, change of outer garments, and her tearful, eagerglances atthe door, all
telling, very affectingly, to how much love the prisoner was about to be
liberated, and how readily he would be transported to his far-off home. There
was only a step for him from exile and shame to the parent’s resources,the
parent’s dwelling, the parent’s arms, the parent’s joy—all these anxiously
waiting for the moment of his discharge.1[Note:Charles New.]
A poor lad once, and a lad so trim—
A poor lad once, and a lad so trim,
Gave his love to her that loved not him.
“And,” says she, “fetch me to-night, you rogue,

Your mother’s heart to feed my dog!”
To his mother’s house went that young man—
To his mother’s house went that young man,
Killed her, and took the heart and ran,
And as he was running, look you, he fell—
And as he was running, look you, he fell.
And the heart rolled on the ground as well.
And the lad as the heart was a-rolling heard—
And the lad as the heart was a-rolling heard
That the heart was speaking, andthis was the word:
The heart was weeping and crying so small—
The heart was weeping and crying so small,

“Are you hurt, my child, are you hurt at all?”2 [Note:JeanRichepin, A
Mother’s Heart.]
II
Powers that are Powerless
“Who” or “What,” demands the Apostle, “shallseparate us from the love of
Christ?” And in his reply he gives us two cataloguesofthe various powers and
influences which we fear as likely to weakenorto alienate our love from Him
in whose love we live. In his first catalogue he enumerates “tribulation,
distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, sword”;in his secondcatalogue he
enumerates “death, life, angels, principalities, powers, things presentand
things to come, height and depth.” As we follow and considerhis words, the
first catalogue presents no difficulty to our thoughts; we feel, we acknowledge,
that the rigours of pain, want, hunger, danger have often strangledlove; we
forbode that, were we long exposedto them, our love might die. But the
secondcatalogueis more difficult. We ask, forinstance, How should “height”
or “depth”; or, again, How should “angels” separate us from the love of
Christ? And it is not until we perceive that St. Paul is indulging in one of those
passionate andrhetorical outbursts which are characteristic ofhis style that
his words shootinto light. But then, when we seize this clue and follow it, we
understand that, in the rapture and exaltationof his spirit, he defies all
heaven and earth to extinguish, or evento lessen, his love for Christ, or
Christ’s love for him; the very “angels andprincipalities” of heaven,
supposing them capable of the endeavour, could not shake him from his rest;
nor all the “powers”ofhell—no vicissitudes of time, whether “present” or “to
come”;nor aught within the bounds, the “heights and depths,” of space.
Strong in the love of Christ, he is more than conqueror over them all.

Observe the difference in order betweenthe Authorized and Revised
Versions. There is overwhelming manuscript authority for placing “powers”
after “things to come.” We naturally expect them to be associatedwith
“principalities,” as in 1 Corinthians 15:24; Ephesians 1:21. It is possible that
in one of the earliestcopies the word may have been accidentallyomitted, and
then added in the margin and reinsertedat the wrong place. But it is perhaps
more probable that in the rush of impassioned thought St. Paul inserts the
words as they come, and that thus “nor powers” may be slightly belated.
When not critically controlled, the order of associationis a very subtle thing.1
[Note:Sanday and Headlam, Romans, 223.]
The possible enemies may be takenin four groups—(1) those of our own
Experience, gatheredunder the two comprehensive words death and life; (2)
those of the world of Spirits, calledangels, principalities, powers;(3) those of
Time, “things presentand things to come”;and (4) those of Space, “nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creation.”
i. Our own Experience
“Neitherdeath, nor life.”
1. Death!What a crude fact it is, driving its iron wedge into the limits of this
strange, mysterious life of ours; and the whole question of immortality comes
quivering up into consciousness withsuch a sentence as this. Death, that seems
to end things, but leaves us so far apart from our beloved! Shall death end
thought also, and shall the dream that has been so fair—that beyond the
world there lived a Heart that caredfor us—vanishinto thick darkness and
leave us utterly alone? Deathshall not separate us from the love of God; death
is but a moment in life, an incident in a soul’s career;and if God has loved us

once He will love us for evermore, and on beyond the boundaries of the world
God’s love waits to be gracious. Deathneedmake no man afraid who has
believed in the love of God.
That men fear death, as likely to separate them from the love of God, to
impair their union with Him, or, perchance, to put them beyond His reach, is
beyond a doubt. There is nothing that most men fear so much as death;
nothing, alas, that most Christians fearso much. We have an instinctive and
natural dread of it, which even faith finds it hard to conquer, and to which
our imperfect faith often lends an additional force. It is not only the darkness
and decayof the tomb that we dread; it is also the judgment which lies beyond
the tomb. It is not only that we are loth to part with those whom we love; we
also fear, lest, in the pangs of death, we should relax the graspof faith. And,
hence, in the Service for the Dead, we use a prayer than which few are more
pathetic: “O Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful
Saviour, thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not at our last hour, for
any pains of death, to fall from Thee.” A most pathetic, and yet, as we often
mean it, a most un-Christian prayer! For what we too commonly imply by it is
that if, amid the pangs of dissolution and the darkness of death, we should
ceaseto see God by faith and to put our trust in Him, He will forsake us;that
if, oppressedby mortal weakness, we loosenour hold upon Him, He will let us
fall; that at the very crisis, and in the very circumstance, in which an earthly
friend would strengthen his comforting graspon us, our heavenly Friend will
relax His graspand let us drop into the darkness which waits to devour us up
Whereas Christ has taught us that God’s help is nearestwhen we most need
His help, that He perfects His strength in our weakness, thatour redemption
from all evil depends, not on our fluctuating sense of His Presence, oron our
imperfect love for Him, but on His being with us although we know it not, and
His eternalunbounded love for us.1 [Note:Samuel Cox.]
2. It is a greatthing to be persuaded that this power we call death, which has
been so feared and fought against, cannotseverthe ties which unite us to God.

It seems to separate the children of men from so much. Every day we see it in
its own ancient and awful way invading human homes, breaking up circles of
friendship, and laying its touch upon the dearestattachments. But let us not
make too much of the isolating powerof death even from this point of view.
There is a love betweensoul and soul which death cannotdestroy—a love that
loves on though the outward presence has vanished, and is often consciousof
even a closercommunion than when eachcould only half express itself
through the poor medium of the body. Death means invisibility, but not the
loss or destruction of love; not separation, perhaps not even distance. And
how much more must it be true of God that death cannot divide us from Him,
cannot pluck us out of His hands, cannotcrush us out of existence? To be
loved by God is to be preserved and cherished. We are His children, therefore
we must live on with Him and be caredfor by Him.
To God death and the hereafterare not the mysteries and barriers they are to
us. Those who die to us live to Him. They are in His care wherever they are.
They have not passedfrom His sight because they have passedfrom our
sight—gone beyond the range of our eye and ear. The mere passagefrom the
seento the unseencannot touch His influence, His love to them, His power to
help them and to hold communion with them. Deathcan have no manner of
dominion over the Love that gave us their love, and gave it, not that it might
perish, but for everlasting life.2 [Note:J. Hunter.]
I thought the road would be hard and bare,
But lo! flowers,
Springing flowers,

Bright flowers blossoming everywhere!
The night, I feared, would be dark and drear,
But lo! stars,
Golden stars,
Glorious, glowing stars are here!
And my shrinking heart, setfree from dread,
Sees Love
(Lo! it is Love.)
God’s love crowning with Deathmy head!1 [Note: MargaretBlaikie, Songsby
the Way, 56.]
It happened in 1901—ifI may introduce a personalillustration—that my only
child fell ill, and for a time, as it seemed, dangerouslyill. One day she fell into
a troubled sleep, in which it was evident that her dreams were disquiet. She
tossedabout and cried aloud. Her mother bent over her, touched her, and she
awoke. The eyes ofthe little sufferer opened. She lookedup at her mother’s
face, and oh! what a change passedoverher own; and she said, “Oh, mother

dear, I have been dreaming such dreadful things. I dreamt that I was far away
in a dark place, and that I calledand calledand you could not hear, and did
not answer. And then you touched me, and I opened my eyes, and there you
were.” The language ofthe child reminded me of the language ofa saint, one
of the greatestthat everlived, in a prayer addressedto the King of kings and
Lord of lords: “We sleep, o our Father, on Thy tender and paternal bosom,
and in our sleepwe sometimes dream that all is wrong, only to wake and find
that all is right.”2 [Note:R. J. Campbell.]
The truest and tenderestearthly love says to its beloved, what is said on
Charles Kingsley’s tombstone in EversleyChurchyard: Amavimus, amamus,
amabimus.
Even for the dead I will not bind
My soulto grief; death cannot long divide,
For is it not as if the rose that climbed
My garden-wallhad bloomed the other side?
3. Norlife.—We know death—that black cloud which is ever travelling
towards us across the waste and will presently touch us with its cold shadow.
St. Paul bids it come. Ay, and life too. His defiance rises from death to life; for
life, did we but realize it, is a worse enemy than death—more perilous, more
mysterious, more awful.

Many there be that seek Thyface
To meet the hour of parting breath;
But ’tis for life I need Thy grace:
Life is more solemn still than death.
What dread chances it holds! what appalling chances ofdisaster, of suffering,
of shame! Who can forecastwhatmay be on the morrow? Perhaps poverty, or
disease, orinsanity, or—worse than all—disgrace.Manya man has
succumbed to a sudden temptation, and, in one passionate moment, has
defamed the honour of his blameless years. Surely life is more terrible than
death, and it is nothing less than a deliverance and a triumph when a
wayfarerarrives at his journey’s end and is laid to restwithout reproach.
Out of the sleepof earth, with visions rife
I woke in death’s clearmorning, full of life:
And said to God, whose smile made all things bright,
“Thatwas an awful dream I had last night.”

4. Nota few honest and devout souls in these days are compelled by their
experience to interpret “life” in our text as including intellectual perplexities
and doubts, suspensions ofjudgment on important matters of faith,
uncertainties, even positive disbelief in things once surely believed among us.
Growing knowledge in many directions, physical discovery, the advance of
philosophical thought, the new study of comparative religion, the more purely
critical study and interpretation of our sacredreligious literature—these and
other causes are operating to unsettle and change traditional ways of thinking
about many things and to make ancient symbols fade and fail. Let us not be
anxious or fearful. The mind must obey its laws;and to feel and obey the
sacredclaims of truth is to love God with the mind. The truth of things is also
the thought of God in things.
(1) Realizing the love of God in Jesus Christ, we more than triumph over all
the mystery of life. The natural tendency of the painful things of human life is
to induce a depressedmood, to render us scepticaltowards the greatesttruths.
Many are not affectedby the dark aspects ofnature and history: they give
these no place in their thought; they never brood over them, wondering what
they mean; thoughtless and shallow, they eatand drink and sleep. It is very
different with others. They cannot rest because of the suffering and sorrow of
the world, and the natural actionof such brooding is to work havoc in the
soul. Reasonfails to solve the cruel problems; then scepticismsets in, and
despair by scepticism. But so long as I cansay “He loved me and gave himself
for me,” I am immune from the baneful power of mystery and intellectual
bewilderment: the darkness emphasized by science and felt by us all cannot
blind and destroy me. He who has savedme from death in His own death will
one day clearup these painful puzzles; they are incidental and temporary.
Love in the heart means light in the eye. Believing all things, hoping all things,
enduring all things, I keepmy hold on the eternal truths which ensure eternal
life.

In the sunless deeps are animals with eyes of extraordinary size. And the
marvellous thing is that these particular creatures have in a high degree the
powerof manufacturing their own light, and the economizing of the delicate
phosphorescencehas developedin them eyes of remarkable magnitude and
power. With their self-createdluminousness these abyssalfish withstand the
blackness oftheir environment, and indirectly the darkness has securedfor
them eyes far more splendid than those of their shallow-waterrelatives. Thus
is it in the abyss in which we live, and which proves to so many a gulf of dark
despair. There are thousands of noble men and women with splendid eyes.
They see God as clearlyas any angel in heaven cansee Him; they behold His
government over them causing all things to work togetherfor their good;they
view the goldenconsummation to which the universe tends. The very darkness
that presses upon them has taught them the secretofmaking light in
themselves, and it has developed in them a powerof vision that pierces to the
heart of things.1 [Note:W. L. Watkinson.]
What, then, is to be done in this rickety, crazy world, so mad, so tumultuous,
so vexatious in its moral mysteries? This brings us right awayto Bethlehem,
to Calvary, to the Christ. I grow in the convictionthat nothing can reconcile
all mysteries and contradictions, and illuminate all perplexing darkness, but
the light which streams from the priesthood of Him whom I worship as God
the Son. He keeps the world alive; inquire more deeply into that suggestion,
and find how large and true it is. Christ is the life of the world and the light of
the world, and though He be statisticallyoutnumbered, He is influentially
supreme.1 [Note: JosephParker, WellBegun, 169.]
O Thou, in all Thy might so far,
In all Thy love so near,

Beyond the range of sun and star,
And yet beside us here,—
What heart can comprehend Thy name,
Or, searching, find Thee out,
Who art within, a quickening Flame,
A Presence round about?
Yet though I know Thee but in part,
I ask not, Lord, for more;
Enough for me to know Thou art,
To love Thee and adore.
O sweeterthan aught else besides,
The tender mystery

That like a veil of shadow hides
The Light I may not see!
And dearerthan all things I know
Is childlike faith to me,
That makes the darkestway I go
An open path to Thee.2 [Note:Frederick Lucian Hosmer.]
(2) In the consciousnessofthe Divine love we more than triumph over all the
suffering of life. The sorrow oflife does not harm. Conquerors are often much
the worse forthe battle. A victorious fleet is a shatteredfleet, often scarcely
able to find a spar on which to hang the flag of victory; a triumphant army is
a strickenhost that moves spectators to tears;a conquering athlete is a ghastly
sight. But the Apostle intimates that this stern fight unto death shall inflict
upon us no serious and abiding wound. If we could for a moment transcend
carnallimits and peep into glory, we should see that our glorified ancestryare
not one whit the worse for their life of hardship and martyrdom, They
suffered greattribulation, but they have survived all without a scar.
Not long ago I visited a flower-show, and, following the crowd, found myself
amid a delightful hostof orchids. It is needless to saywhat wonderful shapes
and colours were displayed; masters of language need the wealth of poetry to

describe the grace and magnificence whichthey unfold; they epitomize the
perfection of the world. They are strangelyprivileged plants, gorgeous
children of the sun, and they show what can be done under blue skies in
depths of safety, in balmy air, with brilliant light. But before leaving the
exhibition I wanderedinto another department, where the Alpine plants were
being exhibited. Not expecting much this time, I was surprised and delighted
by triumphs of form and colour. They did not suffer in comparisonwith the
tropical blooms. Delicate, curiouslybeautiful, inexpressibly elegant, vivid in
colour, of manifold dyes, perfumed with subtle scents of sweetness, they
charmed and dazzled eyes that had just been satiatedby the butterfly colours
of Easternbeauties. And the Alpine gems owedall that they were to what they
had suffered. Their sparkle is the gleam of the ice-age;their whiteness that of
the eternalsnows on whose border they sprang; they caughttheir royal blue
whilst dizzy peaks thrust them into the awful sky; they are so firm because the
rock on which they grew has got into them; they are so sensitive because they
trembled so long on the precipice. They are the children of night and winter,
the nurslings of blizzards; cataracts, glaciers,and avalanches perfectedtheir
beauty. In a vast, savage, elementalwarthey won the glory which makes them
worthy to stand by the picked blooms painted by all the art of perpetual
summer. Thus the sanctified sternness ofhuman life blossoms in great, pure,
beautiful souls which adorn heaven itself.1 [Note:W. L. Watkinson.]
Thou hast visited me with Thy storms,
And the vials of Thy sore displeasure
Thou hast poured on my head, like a bitter draught
Poured forth without stint or measure;

Thou hast bruised me as flax is bruised;
Made me clay in the potter’s wheel;
Thou has hardened Thy face like steel,
And castdown my soulto the ground;
Burnt my life in the furnace of fire, like dross,
And left me in prison where souls are bound:
Yet my gain is more than my loss.
What if Thou hadst led my soul
To the pastures where dull souls feed;
And setmy steps in smooth paths, far away
From the rocks where men struggle and bleed;
Penned me in low, fat plains,

Where the air is as still as death,
And Thy greatwinds are sunk to a breath,
And Thy torrents a crawling stream,
And the thick steamof wealth goes up day and night,
Till Thy sun gives a veiled light,
And heaven shows like a vanished dream!
What if Thou hadst setmy feet
With the rich in a gilded room;
And made me to sit where the scorners sit,
Scoffing at death and doom!
What if I had hardened my heart

With dark counsels line upon line;
And blunted my soul with meat and with wine,
Till my ears had growndeaf to the bitter cry
Of the halt and the weak and the impotent;
Nor hearkened, lapt in a dull content,
To the groanings of those who die!
My being had waxeddull and dead
With the lusts of a gross desire;
But now Thou hast purged me throughly, and burnt
My shame with a living fire.
So burn me, and purge my will
Till no vestige of self remain,

And I stand out renewedwithout spot or stain.
Then let Thy flaming angelat last
Smite from me all that has been before;
And sink me, freed from the load of the past,
In Thy dark depths evermore.1 [Note:Sir Lewis Morris, From the Desert.]
ii. The World of Spirits
“Norangels, nor principalities, nor powers.”
“Norangels, nor principalities, nor powers;” this is a Jewishphrase for the
spiritual hierarchy. The modern equivalent is the unseen forces which
encompass us, those mysterious powers and operations which act upon our
lives, and compel them to unthought-of issues. Theylie without us, mysterious,
incalculable, uncontrollable, invading us unexpectedly, shaping our
experience, and determining our destiny. We never know what they will be
doing with us.
This secondsetof enemies is still more mysterious and strong. The
experiences ofthis world shall not separate us, but what is there beyond this

world? What is that unseen which lingers near us and sometimes almost
breaks through into sight—angels, principalities, and powers? There have
been different views of what this means.
(1) It is important, says Maclaren, to observe that this expression, whenused
without any qualifying adjective, seems uniformly to mean goodangels, the
hierarchy of blessedspirits before the throne. So that there is no reference to
“spiritual wickedness in high places” striving to draw men awayfrom God.
The supposition which the Apostle makes is, indeed, an impossible one—that
these ministering spirits, who are sent forth to minister to them who shall be
heirs of salvation, should so forget their missionand contradict their nature as
to seek to bar us out from the love which it is their chiefestjoy to bring to us.
St. Paul knows it to be an impossible supposition, and its very impossibility
gives energy to his conclusion, just as when in the same fashion he makes the
other equally impossible supposition about an angel from heavenpreaching
another gospelthan that which he had preachedto them.
(2) On the other hand, Kelman says:If we study the thought of St. Paul’s day
we shall find a very orderly and detailed systemof demonology, in which they
conceiveda brood of evil spirits who tempt the souls of men. There are those
who still hold that view, and there are those who take other views of such
matters. You may call it that, or you may call it nerves, or you may call it any
name you please;the difficulty is not in what you call it, but in what you find
it to be in your daily experience. And whatever may be the ultimate
explanation of these things, this remains true, that some day we wakenwith
our whole heart set upon doing the will of God and pleasing Him, and before
the day is half-done some powerfrom without or from within in this strange
mechanism of body and spirit in which we live, some powerlike a greatevil
hand, has laid hold upon our life and broken it across, andeverything has
gone wrong with us, and we. try in vain to right it. The day is handed over to
the powers, ofdarkness. And if there is anything in our experience which
makes it difficult to remember and believe in the love of God, it is just such a

thing as this. In any sort of bitterness, so long as it be a smooth-flowing
experience, we can continue to believe; but when this sort of thing happens,
God has gone from heaven, and all things are left the sport of evil power. But
we are in His universe, and these are but the hounds of God that He holds in
the leashin His hand and will not let too far upon the souls He loves. Thatalso
is part of the greatlove of God, and His love has not been defeatedby angels,
or principalities, or powers. He loves us still through the worst day of it all.
Lord, whomsoeverThoushalt send to me,
Let that same be
Mine Angel predilect;
Veiled or unveiled, benignant or austere,
Aloof or near;
Thine, therefore mine, elect.
So may my soul nurse patience day by day,
Watch on and pray
Obedient and at peace;

Living a lonely life in hope, in faith;
Loving till death,
When life, not love, shall cease.
… Lo, thou mine Angel with transfigured face
Brimful of grace,
Brimful of love for me!
Did I misdoubt thee all that weary while,
Thee with a smile
For me as I for thee?1 [Note:Christina G. Rossetti.]
iii. Time
“Northings present, nor things to come.”

1. “Northings present, nor things to come” is the Apostle’s next class of
powers impotent to disunite us from the love of God. The rhythmical
arrangementof the text deserves to be noticed, not only as bearing on its
music and rhetorical flow, but as affecting its force. We have first a pair of
opposites, and then a triplet: “death, nor life”; “angels,nor principalities, nor
powers.” We I have again a pair of opposites:“things present, nor things to
come”;againfollowedby a triplet: “height, nor depth, nor any other
creature.” The effectof this is to divide the whole into two, and to throw the
first and secondclassesmore closelytogether, as also the third and fourth.
Time and Space, these two mysterious ideas, which work so fatally on all
human love, are powerless here.
2. Men believe in the gay dawning of youth, and in the brilliant days when all
things are fair, and the longestday is never too long, nor the hardest work too
hard, and all things appear in the charm of life in which we began it. But how
much disillusion comes, and the grey skies succeedthe blue, and hopes do not
fulfil themselves, and life is not what it seemedto promise! Then shall we have
to give the venture up at the last, clinging to spar after spar of our wrecked
ship, until at last it is altogetherwater-loggedandsinks, and we are like to
perish. When will the day come that the love of God also will die out, and we
shall be left loveless in this ghastly universe? That day will never come.
Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speedis but the heavy Plummet’s pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,

Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as eachthing bad thou hast entomb’d,
And last of all, thy greedyself consumed,
Then long Eternity shall greetour bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood:
When every thing that is sincerelygood
And perfectly divine,

With Truth, and Peace,and Love, shall evershine
About the supreme Throne
Of Him, t’whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heav’nly-guided soul shall climb,
Then, all this Earthy grossnessquit,
Attir’d with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death and Chance, and thee O Time.1 [Note:Milton.]
The greatRevelationof God, on which the whole of Judaism was built, was
that made to Moses ofthe name “I AM THAT I AM.” And parallel to the
verbal revelation was that symbol of the Bush, burning and unconsumed,
which is so often misunderstood. It appears wholly contrary to the usage of
Scriptural visions, which are ever wont to express in material form the same
truth which accompaniesthem in words, that the meaning of that vision
should be, as it is frequently takenas being, the continuance of Israel,
unharmed by the fiery furnace of persecution. Notthe continuance of Israel,
but the eternity of Israel’s God is the teaching of that flaming wonder. The
Burning Bush and the Name of the Lord proclaimed the same great truth of
self-derived, self-determined, timeless, undecaying Being. And what better
symbol than the bush burning, and yet not burning out, could be found of that
God in whose life there is no tendency to death, whose work digs no pit of

weariness into which it falls, who gives and is none the poorer, who fears no
exhaustion in His spending, no extinction in His continual shining? And this
eternity of Being is no mere metaphysical abstraction. It is eternity of love, for
God is love. That greatstream, the pouring out of His own very inmost Being,
knows no pause;nor does the deep fountain from which it flows eversink one
hair’s-breadth in its pure basin.2 [Note:A. Maclaren.]
iv. Space
“Norheight, nor depth, nor any other creature.”
1. While our Revisers had the courage oftheir scholarshipin dealing with
Romans 8:19-21, that courage seems to have failed them in dealing with this
39th verse, where the same Greek wordis used, and where therefore it should,
by their own rule, be rendered by the same Englishword. Instead of putting
“nor any other creation” into the text, they have banished the word “creation”
into the margin, and retained the word “creature” in the text, although every
one must admit that betweena single creature and a whole creationthere is a
considerable, evenan enormous, difference.
There may yet, says the Apostle, be some fresh transformations. I know not
what new environment may yet confront me, what strange world, what
undreamed-of surroundings, what play of forces more dread and solemn than
I have hitherto experienced;but I fear not even that. Forthere is nothing
here, nothing there, nothing anywhere about which I need to fret or trouble;
because, whereverI may be and whatevermay happen, I shall have the love of
God for my comrade and my portion.

2. As the former clause proclaimed the powerlessnessofTime, so this
proclaims the powerlessnessofthat other greatmystery of creatural life which
we call Space. Height or depth, it matters not. That diffusive love diffuses
itself equally in all directions. Up or down, it is all the same. The distance
from the centre is equal to zenith or to nadir. Here we have the same process
applied to that idea of Omnipresence as was applied in the former clause to
the idea of Eternity. That thought, so hard to graspwith vividness, and not
altogethera gladone to a sinful soul, is all softenedand glorified, as some
solemn Alpine cliff of bare rock is when the tender morning light glows onit,
when it is thought of as the Omnipresence of Love. “Thou God seestme” may
be a stern word, if the God who sees be but a mighty Makeror a righteous
Judge. As reasonablymight we expect a prisoner in his solitary cell to be glad
when he thinks that the jailer’s eye is on him from some unseen spy-hole in
the wallas expectany thought of God but one to make a man read that grand
139thPsalm with joy: “If I ascendup into heaven, thou art there; if I make
my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there.” So may a man sayshudderingly to
himself, and tremble as he asks in vain, “Whither shall I flee from thy
presence?”But how different it all is when we can castoverthe marble
whiteness of that solemnthought the warm hue of life, and change the form of
our words into this of our text: “Norheight, nor depth, shall be able to
separate us from the love of God.”
Love which, on earth, amid all the shows ofit,
Has ever been seenthe sole goodof life in it,
The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,
Shall arise, made perfect, from death’s repose of it.

And I shall behold Thee, face to face,
O God, and in Thy light retrace
How in all I loved here, still wastThou!
Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,
I shall find as able to satiate
The love, Thy gift, as my spirit’s wonder
Thou art able to quicken and sublimate
With this sky of Thine, that I now walk under,
And glory in Thee for, as I gaze
Thus, thus! Oh, let men keeptheir ways
Of seeking Thee in a narrow shrine—
Be this my way! And this is mine!1 [Note: Browning, Christmas Eve.]

III
A Persuasionthat Prevails
“I am persuaded.”
1. “I am persuaded,” says the Apostle, and this is one of his greatphrases.
Wherever it occurs, it expresses,not merely an assuredfaith, a strong
conviction, but a faith in something which is not obvious or indisputable, and
a conviction which has been reachedafter many a doubt and many a struggle,
after much questioning and long groping in the darkness. The Apostle has had
to feel his way through the tangle out into the open. And thus, when he says “I
am persuaded,” he is proclaiming a conviction which has satisfiedhis deepest
need.
The assurance came to him, as it comes to every man who makes the glad
discovery, out of his experience. He lookedback along the road which he had
travelled blindly, with bleeding feetand a troubled heart, and he saw that an
unseen hand had been guiding him and shaping his lot and making all things
work togetherfor his good. And thus he was “persuaded.” This is the surest, if
indeed it is not the only, evidence of God. It is not the teleologicalor
ontologicalargumentthat has compelledmy faith. No, it is this—that I have
found God in my life, and have seenthere the operationof His grace and
goodness,His wisdomand strength. I recognize, as I look back, that, when I
thought I was wandering alone in the darkness, He was leading me all the
time, and the experiences whichwere so painful and distressing at the moment
have proved the most precious of all and have brought me enlargement and
enrichment.

2. It is a greatthing to be able to use such words as these with regard to the
supreme verities. It is like having one’s house built upon a rock instead of
upon the shifting sand. It is like having one’s course clearlymarked upon the
chart, and one’s rudder and compass in perfectorder, as compared with the
man who has neither chart nor compass, and simply drifts. This explains why,
on the scientific side of life, men in this age are so strong, and on the religious
side so weak;they are sure of their science;they are not sure, or at leastnot so
sure, of their religion. Agnostics, that is what so many call themselves to-
day—not atheists, not infidels. Few saythere is no God. What they sayis, “We
do not know”;and the uncertainty paralyses religious, action. “I am
persuaded,” wrote the Apostle, and, being persuadedhimself, he has
persuaded millions more; for your convincedmen, the men certain of their
ground, the men who canring out, “It is so,” “I know,” “Ido verily believe”—
these are the strong men, the men who do most work, the men of widest, most
potent influence. For the masses are always attractedby confidence, and will
embrace the wildestsuperstition, embark on the most Quixotic enterprise, if
one who has absolute faith in his cause leads the way; while what is in itself an
unquestionable truth will hardly touch them if it is advanced with hesitancy
or faltering. It is the men who, like St. Paul, cansay, “I am persuaded,” “I
know whom I have believed,” or, like Luther, “Ich kann nicht anders,” “I
cannot do otherwise,” thatmove the world; for if doubt is contagious,thank
God faith is contagious too.
It is still the evident and immediate duty of many people living in Christian
lands to set themselves at once to know God as He has been revealedto the
world by Jesus Christ. To know Him is to have an untroubled and unlimited
confidence in Him, and their want of confidence shows that they do not know
Him. Right knowledge ofGod is everything for strength and peace. It is told
of one of our Scottishmartyrs, that, looking up to the hills of his native
Nithsdale, he cried out, “I could pass through these mountains were they
clothed in flame if I could only be sure that Godloves me.”1 [Note:J. Hunter.]

One Sunday night, as I was preaching in my own place, I had finished the
sermon, as I thought, with the declarationof the sufficiency of Christ. I had
closedthe sermon, and had passeddown to the vestry, when a plain working
man followedme in. He said, “Did you finish your sermonjust now?” I said,
“Yes, I think so;I meant to.” “I think,” he said, “there is something you did
not say;you spoke about the forgiveness of sins, and the sufficiency of Christ,
and the love of God in Redemption; but there is something else you did not
say, and it is a part I never like to be left out.” I said, “What is it?” “Why,” he
said, “years ago I was brought to Christ; and a terrible load I took to Him. I
placed it down at the Cross, andI thought all was right. But the next morning
my skies were grey. The next day I was beatenin the Valley of Humiliation
fighting with Apollyon. He won. My temptation was too strong, I failed and I
fell, I failed again, till everybody ceasedto believe in me; and I ceasedto
believe in myself, and held myself in contempt. At last, one day, in
desperation, I raisedmy hands to heaven and said, ‘Lord Jesus, Iclaim Thy
promise, I claim Thy power, look at me to-night.’ ” The man, continuing, said,
“Forfive years He has kept me as I am, and I am amongstthe living to praise
Him. Preach, I beseechyou, next time you approachthis subject, preach that
Christ is able to save to the uttermost. The Saviour can battle with temptation,
and make us sufficient, every time the assaultcomes, to win the victory for the
glory of God.”1 [Note:R. J. Campbell.]
The motto of the order of knighthood called St. Patrick is “Quis separabit”:
“Who shall separate?”
Yea, of this I am persuaded—
Neither Death, nor Life, nor Angels—

No, not the CelestialHierarchy,
Not “they that excelin strength”—
Nor the present world, nor the world to come;
Nor the height of Heaven,
Nor the abyss of Hades,
Nor aught else in God’s creation,
Shall avail to sever us from the love of God,
The love incarnatedin the Messiah, in Jesus,
Our Lord—ours!2 [Note:A. S. Way.]
An Inseparable Love
BIBLEHUB RESOURCES

Martyr Churches, Hebrew And Christian: A Contrast
Psalm44:22 and Romans 8:36
C. Clemance
There is something marvellously touching about this psalm. It is the voice of a
martyr Church, which has to witness for God amid persecution, flame, and
sword. It divides itself into four parts. In the first there is a glowing retrospect
(vers. 1-8); in the second, a mournful plaint (vers. 9-17 and 22); in the third, a
solemn appealto the Church's King and Lord (vers. 18-21);in the fourth, an
earnestprayer (vers. 23-26). As an historicaldocument, which (as it has come
down to us) is without date, we cannot but ask - To what period of Hebrew
history canit apply? Another question suggests itself, viz. - Is the whole of the
psalm justifiable? We will deal with these two questions as briefly as possible
consistentlywith clearness,that we may "open up" the theme which the
answers thereto will set before us. In order to ascertainthe period of Israel's
history to which the psalm refers, we must note the data presented to us
therein. According to the psalmist's statements;
(1) Israel had been scattered(ver. 11).
(2) The people had been defeatedin arms (ver. 10).
(3) They were a reproachand a byword among the nations (vers. 13, 14).
(4) They were soldinto slavery (ver. 12).
(5) They were "countedas sheep for the slaughter" (vers. 11, 22).
(6) All this had happened to them, although they had not departed from their
God; and although this had happened, still they were not departing from him
(vers. 17, 18).
(7) So far from this, they were even slain for their fidelity to truth and to God.
"Forthy sake we are killed all the day long" (ver. 22). It is not easyto find a
period in the national life when the whole of these seven, data can be verified.

By one considerationor other, we are almostdriven forward to the time of the
Maccabees, betweenB.C. 200 and B.C. 160 (2 Macc. 5:11-23). Mr. Walford
says, "Thatfierce and idolatrous prince Antiochus Epiphanes, the King of
Syria, was actuatedby an inveterate hatred to the laws and religion of the
Jews;and he employed the utmost efforts of his policy and power to induce
them to apostatize. Under the severestpenalties, he prohibited the worship of
Jehovah, the celebrationof the sabbath, and other religious festivals, the
practice of circumcision, and the whole of the precepts of the Mosaic Law.
Notwithstanding this dreadful persecution, the greaterpart of the people
steadily adhered to the Divine institutions, and refusedto comply with the
idolatrous acts to which their tormentors would have compelled them, though
they suffered the most dreadful tortures for their noncompliance with the
injunctions of their formidable adversaries."To this period alone do we feel
warranted in referring this psalm. There are two objections which have been
made thereto. One, that the canonof Old TestamentScripture was finally
closedlong before. But such does not appearto have been the case. Another,
that at the time of the Maccabeesthe hope of a resurrectionbuoyed up the
sufferers to an extent of which this psalm gives no trace whatever(2 Macc.
7:6-17). But though this may have some weight, yet we must be careful not to
lay too much stress on what the psalm does not contain. In all probability the
survivors were more brokenin spirit than such as were appointed unto death.
Anyway, it is fairly clearthat in the period to which we now refer, eachone of
the sevendata above named canbe verified with tolerable ease. Butthis
cannot be said of either of the other periods to which the plaint of this psalm
has been assigned. Theseare:
1. The time of David. (So Hengstenberg, Delitzsch, Moll, Fausset, etal.) But in
David's time we cannot verify either the first, second, third, or seventh of the
above data. As Calvin remarks, the Church and nation, as a whole, were
prosperous and victorious in David's time.
2. Other periods assignedhave been - the time of the Exile (Geikie); the times
of Jchoiachinand Zedekiah(Baur, De Wette, and Tholuck); the times of
Josiahand Jehoiakim(Barnes);the last days of the Persiandynasty (Ewald);
but of one and all of these it may be said that they fail to meet the conditions
of data 6 and 7. Forthe Chronicler expresslydeclares that the troubles of

those periods came upon Israel in consequenceofthe peoples'unfaithfulness
to their covenant and their God. Consequently, until further light is thrown
on the subject, we adhere to the Maccabeanperiod as that which most nearly
fulfils the conditions to which reference is made. Another question is this - Is
the Church's strong assertionof national integrity to God justifiable? Some
say, Yes (so Moll, Delitzsch). Some, No (so Perowne). But it is only fair to the
writer to suppose him to refer simply to the occasionthat drew forth the
complaint; he cannot mean that all the nation had been always and uniformly
faithful. His intention evidently is this - that there was at that time no
defectionfrom God on the part of the people to accountfor the specific
persecutionover which he mourns. And since this is the case, he feels he may
appeal to God to fulfil his ownpromise, and to save them for his mercies'
sake. We are not prepared to question the propriety of this. All depends on
the spirit in which it was said. We well remember that, in the late American
War, a noted and eloquent abolitionist went so far as to maintain that the
North must win, because Godwas God! At the same time, there is no doubt
that the complaint, the appeal, and the whole tone of the psalm bear traces of
a partial revelation, and consequentlyof an imperfectly developedfaith. We
have but to pass over the line that divides the two dispensations, to plant
ourselves in the middle of the first Christian century, and there we find that
Christians were having, and were likely to have, a struggle as hard and fierce
as that of the Hebrews of old. So much so that one of their number adopts as
his ownthe most touching words in the whole psalm, "Forthy sake we are
killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter." And yet
there is neither moan nor sigh, no, not a tear; rather, a song of gladness, "In
all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us!"
(Romans 8:36, 37). Whence the contrastbetweenthe Hebrews sigh and the
Christians song whilst in the midst of persecutionand death!
I. IN THE HEBREW DISPENSATION GOD SPAKE THROUGH
PROPHETS;IN THE CHRISTIAN GOD HAS SPOKEN IN HIS SON.
(Hebrews 1:1.) The greatTransfigurationscene sets this forth in marvellous
clearness.Moses andElias vanish from sight, and the favoured three are left
with Jesus only; in him believers saw the incarnate Son of God, the Father's
express Image, who brought with him, in peerless union, the tenderness and

sympathy of the brother-man, with the majesty and might of the infinite and
eternal God. Hence the figure in the background of Hebrew thought was
vastly different from that in the backgroundof Christian thought; the former
commanded reverential heed, as a Messengerfrom heaven; the latter,
unbounded love and entire consecration, as Saviourand Lord of all!
II. THE STORYOF THE REDEMPTIONWITH WHICH ISRAEL'S
NATIONAL LIFE OPENEDIS FAR OUTDONE BY THE HISTORY OF
THE REDEMPTION BROUGHT IN BY JESUS CHRIST. It was with a glow
of pride and thankfulness that the Hebrew singerrecounted the deliverance
from Egypt, and the entrance to Canaan's land (see also Psalm 78., 105., 106.,
107.). But how vastly is all this surpassedboth in tenderness and in grandeur,
by such words as these! - "He loved me, and gave himself for me" (Galatians
2:20); "Having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them
openly, triumphing over them in it." The words fell with force and beauty on
the ears of Old Testamentsaints, "I gave Egypt for thy ransom; Ethiopia and
Seba for thee;" but how much greaterthe charm on Christian ears of the
words, "He gave himself" (Isaiah 43:3, 4; Galatians 2:20)!
God, in the Personof his Son, Has all his mightiest works outdone."
III. THE HEBREW CHURCH, TERRITORIALAND NATIONAL, HAS
GIVEN PLACE TO THE CHURCH OF GOD, made up of men gathered
from every nation, and kindred, and people, and tongue. The Church's "land"
now can never be invaded. We can never sigh, "The heathen are come into
thine inheritance." That is impossible. The entrance into Christ's Church is
not decidedby rites nor by birth, save by the new birth of the Holy Ghost.
Neither features nor racial marks form any sign of this new brotherhood. "In
Christ Jesus neithercircumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a
new creature" (Galatians 6:15).
IV. THE HATRED OF THE JEW BY THE GENTILE IS SUCCEEDED BY
THE WORLD'S HATRED OF THE CHURCH. Where religion is or has been
regardedas a piece of statecraft, whetheramong pagans, Papists, or
Protestants, divergence fromthe rites appointed by state or Church has been
punished with fire and sword. And the Antiochian persecutionin the time of

the Maccabees hadits parallel in the Diocletianpersecutionin the Christian
era. And although in our own land such treatment is not permitted, yet there
is, though largelyunseen to the public eye, a fierce hatred by the ungodly of
pure and undefiled religion; and many and many a faithful soldier of the cross
has to endure petty insult, abuse, and scorn, to an extent known only to
himself and his Lord.
V. THE HATRED OF THE WORLD, WHICH WAS THE HEBREWS'
DREAD, IS NOW THE CHRISTIAN'S BADGE OF HONOUR. It was SO
with the apostles (Acts 5:41; Galatians 6:17). It was so with private Christians
in apostolic times (1 Peter4:13-16). In enduring persecutionin the early
Christian centuries, believers so regardedit. And even now we have to
remember the Master's words in John 15:18-21. The ancient Hebrews could
not bear the scornof their foes;Christians regard it as "the fellowship of
Christ's sufferings," and delighted in the words, 2 Corinthians 4:10, 11.
VI. IN THE MIDST OF FIERCEST PERSECUTION, CHRISTIANS HAVE
REALIZED THE CHANGELESSNESS OF DIVINE LOVE; even when they
were "countedas sheepfor the slaughter." Where we have from the Hebrews
a groan, we have from the Christians a song (Romans 8:35, 36;Stephen, Acts
6:15 and Acts 7:55-60;Matthew 5:12; Romans 5:3; 2 Corinthians 12:10;
Philippians 1:29; Hebrews 10:3, 4; James 1:2; 1 Peter 4:13, 16). Believers
knew that nothing could ever separate them from Divine love; and that the
stroke that closedthe life below set them free for the higher life "with Christ,
which was very far better."
VII. HENCE CHRISTIANS SAW, WITH A CLEARNESS TO WHICH
HEBREW SAINTS COULD NOT ATTAIN, THAT THE CHURCH EXISTS
IN TWO WORLDS. So our Lord has taught in Matthew 16:18 (Revised
Version); Revelation1:18. And the disclosure of this became evenclearer
through the visions granted to the seerin Patmos, when (Revelation7.) he saw
one part of the Church, below, sealedin the greattribulation, and another
part of the Church, above, caught up out of it. Knowing this, as the early
Christians did, they knew also that the rage and hate of the enemy could in no
wise really harm the Church, since their Lord was building it up in the realm
above by the incoming of saints passing up from below. Hence even the

slaughterof the people of God was but as a chariotof fire conducting them to
the regionwhere "they cannotdie any more."
VIII. THU, INSTEAD OF AN AGONIZING CRY TO GOD TO
INTERPOSE, THERE IS A PEAL OF TRIUMPH THAT NO
INTERPOSITIONIS NEEDED. "Inall these things we are more than
conquerors through him that loved us." More than conquerors! What a grand
and noble defiance of the enemy is there here! And how richly glorious is this
proof of the development of the Divine intent to reveal his love more fully as
the ages rolledon! Note: If an expositor unfolds Psalm 44. historically only, he
must transfer himself to the ancienttimes; but if he will dealwith that psalm
from a Christian standpoint, he will have a glorious field for expansionin
contrasting the piteous wail of Psalm 44:22 with the gladsomenesswith which
the very same words are quoted and applied in the eighth chapter of the
Epistle to the Romans. Blessedbe God that we live in the days of Christ's
fulness of light and life! Amen. - C.
Biblical Illustrator
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life... shall be able to separate us
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.
Romans 8:38, 39
The best persuasion
A visitor said to a poor wounded soldier, who lay dying in the hospital, "What
Church are you of?" "Of the Church of Christ," he replied. "I mean, what
persuasionare you of?" "Persuasion!" said the dying man, as he looked
heavenward, beaming with love to the Saviour, "I am persuaded, that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, norprincipalities, nor powers, nor things present,
nor things to come, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is
in Christ Jesus."

Love's triumph
A. Maclaren, D.D.
These rapturous words are the climax of the apostle's long demonstration that
the gospelis "the power of God unto salvation." His argument started with
sombre, sad words about man's sinfulness; like some stream rising among
black and barren cliffs, or melancholy moorlands, and foaming through
narrow rifts in gloomy ravines, it reaches atlast fertile lands, and flows calm,
the sunlight dancing on its broad surface, till it loses itselfat last in the
unfathomable oceanofthe love of God. We are told that the biblical view of
human nature is too dark. Well, the important question is not whether it be
dark, but whether it be true. Certainly, a part of it is very dark. The picture of
what men are, painted at the beginning of this Epistle, is black like a canvas of
Rembrandt's. But to get the whole doctrine, we have to see what men may
become. Christianity begins indeed with, "There is none that doeth good, no,
not one," but it ends with this victorious paean, which tells us that the love of
God is —
I. UNAFFECTEDBY THE EXTREMEST CHANGES OF OUR
CONDITION.
1. The apostle begins his catalogue ofvanquished foes by a pair of opposites,
"neither death nor life," which coverthe whole ground, and represent the
extremes of change which canbefall us. If these two stations, so far from each
other, are equally near to God's love, then no intermediate point can be far
from it. "Whetherwe live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die
unto the Lord." His love to us makes no accountof that mightiest of changes.
How should it be affectedby slighter ones? The distance of a staris measured
by the apparent change in its position, as seenfrom different points of the
earth's surface or orbit. But this greatlight stands steadfastin our heaven,
nor moves a hair's breadth, nor pours a feebler ray on us, whether we look up
to it from the midsummer of busy life, or from the midwinter of death.
2. Of course the confidence of immortality is implied in this thought. Death
does not affectthe essentialvitality of the soul; so it does not affectthe outflow

of God's love to that soul. It is a change of condition and circumstance, and no
more.
3. How this thought contrasts with the saddestaspectof the power of death!
Deathunclasps our hands from the closest, dearestgrasp, parts soul and body,
loosens everybond of society;but there is one bond which his "abhorred
shears" cannotcut. Their edge is turned on it. One Hand holds us in a grasp
which the fleshless fingers of death in vain strive to loosen. The separator
becomes the uniter; he rends us apart from the world that he may "bring us
to God." The love filtered by drops on us in life is poured upon us in a flood in
death!
II. UNDIVERTED FROM US BY ANY OTHER ORDER OF BEINGS. "Nor
angels, nor principalities, nor powers." The suppositionwhich is, indeed, an
impossible one, that these ministering spirits should so forget their mission
and contradict their nature as to seek to bar us out from the love which it is
their chiefestjoy to bring to us; and its very impossibility gives energy to his
conclusion(see also Galatians 1:8), preaching another gospelthan that which
he had preachedto them. The generalthought implies —
1. The utter powerlessness ofany third party in regardto the relations
betweenour souls and God. We have to do with Him alone. These two, God
and the soul, have to "transact," as if there were no other beings in the
universe.(1) Angels, principalities, etc., may behold with sympathetic joy, and
minister blessing in many ways;but the decisive act of union betweenGod
and the soul they can neither effect nor prevent.(2) And as for them, so for
men around us; the limits of their power to harm us are soonset. They may
shut us out from human love by calumnies, and annoy us in a thousand ways;
they may build a wall around us, and imprison us from many a joy and fair
prospect:but they cannot put a roof on it to keepout the sweetinfluences
from above, or hinder us from looking up to the heavens. Nobody can come
betweenus and God but ourselves.
2. These blessedspirits do not absorb and intercept His love. The planet
nearestthe sun is saturated with fiery brightness, but the rays pass on to each
of the sisterspheres in its turn, and travel awayoutwards to where the

remotestof them all rolls in its far-off orbit. Like that poor womanwho could
lay her fingers on the hem of Christ's garment, notwithstanding the thronging
multitude, we canreach our hands through all the crowd, or rather He
reaches His strong hand to us and heals and blesses us. All the guests are fed
full at that greattable. One's gain is not another's loss. The multitudes sit on
the greengrass, andthe last man of the last fifty gets as much as the first; and
more remains than fed them all. This healing fountain is not exhausted of its
curative powerby the early comers.
III. RAISED ABOVE THE POWER OF TIME. "Northings present, nor
things to come." We had first a pair of opposites, and then a triplet; now
againa pair of opposites, againfollowedby a triplet. The effectof this is to
divide the whole into two, and to throw the first and secondclasses more
closelytogether, as also the third and fourth. Time and space, these two
mysterious ideas, which work so fatally on all human love, are powerlesshere.
1. The great revelationof God, on which the whole of Judaism was built, was
that made to Moses ofthe name "I am that I am." And parallel was that
symbol of the bush, which signified not the continuance of Israel, unharmed
by the fiery furnace of persecution, but the eternity of Israel's God. Both
proclaimed the same greattruth of self-derived, self-determined, timeless,
undecaying being.
2. And this eternity of being is no mere metaphysical abstraction. It is eternity
of love, for God is love. We know of earthly loves which cannot die, and we
have to thank God for such instances of love stronger than death, which make
it easierfor us to believe in the unchanging duration of His. But we know, too,
of love that can change, and we know that all love must part. How blessed
then to know of a love which cannot change or die! The past, the present and
the future are all the same to Him. The whole of what He has been to any past,
He is to us to-day.
3. So we may bring the blessedness ofall the past into the present, and calmly
face the misty future, sure that it cannotrob us of His love. Looking on all the
flow of ceaseless changeofearthly affection, we can lift up with gladness,
heightened by the contrast, the triumphant song of the ancient Church, "Oh,

give thanks unto the Lord: for He is good:because His mercy endureth for
ever!"
IV. PRESENTEVERYWHERE. The apostle ends with, "nor height, nor
depth, nor any other creature," as if he had got impatient of the enumeration
of impotencies, and having named the outside boundaries in space, flings, as it
were, with one rapid toss, into that large room the whole that it cancontain,
and triumphs over it all. As the former clause proclaimedthe powerlessness of
time, so this proclaims the powerlessness ofthat other greatmystery of
creaturallife which we callspace. Height or depth, it matters not. That
diffusive love diffuses itself equally in all directions. The distance from the
centre is equal to Zenith or to Nadir. Here we have the same process applied
to that idea of omnipresence as was applied in the former clause to the idea of
eternity. That thought, so hard to graspwith vividness, and not altogethera
glad one to a sinful soul, is all softenedand glorified, as some solemn Alpine
cliff of bare rock is when the tender morning light glows onit, when it is
thought of as the omnipresence of love. "Then, God, seestme," may be a stern
word, if the God who sees be but a mighty Makeror a righteous Judge. But
how different it all is when we can eastover the marble whiteness of that
solemn thought the warm hue of life. In that greatoceanof the Divine love we
live and move and have our being, floating in it like some sea flowerwhich
spreads its filmy beauty and waves its long tresses in the depths of mid-ocean.
The sound of its waters is ever in our ears, and above, beneath, around us, its
mighty currents run evermore. We need not fear the omnipresence of love,
nor the omniscience which knows us altogether, and loves us even as it knows.
Rather we shall be gladthat we are ever in His presence.Conclusion:
1. The recognitionof this triumphant sovereigntyof love over all these real
and supposedantagonists makes us, too, lords over them, and delivers us from
the temptations which some of them presentus to separate ourselves fromthe
love of God. They all become our servants and helpers, uniting us to that love.
So we are set free from the dread of death and from the distractions incident
to life. So we are delivered from superstitious dread of an unseenworld, and
from craven fearof men. So we are emancipatedfrom absorption in the
present and from carefulthought for the future. So we are at home
everywhere, and every cornerof the universe is to us one of the many

mansions of our Father's house. "All things are yours .... and ye are Christ's;
and Christ is God's."
2. But remember that this love of God is "in Christ Jesus our Lord." Love
illimitable, all-pervasive, eternal; yes, but a love which has a channel and a
course, love which has a method and a process by which it pours itself over
the world. In Christ the love of God is all centred and embodied, that it may
be imparted to all sinful and hungry hearts, even as burning coals are
gatheredon a hearth that they may give warmth to all that are in the house.
(A. Maclaren, D.D.)
Persuadedof the constancyof the Divine love
Thomas Horton, D. D.
We begin with the form of protestation, "I am persuaded," where the apostle,
while he speaksofthe state of a true believer in reference to grace and
salvation, speaks ofit as a matter of certainty and full persuasion. There are
two manner of ways especially, wherebywe come to be assuredof our
salvation.
1. By the inward persuasionof the Holy Ghost in our own consciences.
2. We come to be assuredof our condition, from the reflectionof conscience
itself, our rejoicing is this (2 Corinthians 1:12; 1 John 3:21). The secondis the
matter of it, or thing itself protested; and that is much one with that which he
had before harped upon, "Thatnothing shall be able to separate us from the
love of God in Christ." Now this again is here laid down in these two verses
together, two manner of ways. First, by an enumeration or induction of the
severalparticulars; and secondly, by a winding-up of all togetherin one
generalconclusion. First, death shall not do it; death, it makes a great
separation, it separates the soul from the body, two friends which have been a
greatwhile joined together, and it separates a man from the world. Oh! but
for all this it does not separate a believer from Christ. First, for the souls of
God's children; these are not separatedfrom Him by death. Not separated?

Nay, they are so much the more conjoined. St. Paul desired to be dissolved,
that he might be with Christ (Philippians 1:23; 2 Corinthians 5:6, 8). And so
likewise forthe bodies of Christians; these they are not separatedfrom Christ
neither, even when they lie in the grave, they are very accountable in the eyes
of God, and He has a specialcare ofthem and regard unto them. The very
dust of God's people is precious, and their very bones are numbered by Him.
No, nor secondlyagainby life; that is another part of this link. Life, it shall
not prove hurtful or prejudicial to the people of God. First, not the goodof life
— I mean the outward good, and comfortablenessofit. There is a greatdeal
of hazard and dangerin this. First, as it is an occasionto make men to be so
much the more in love with the world. But God's children are delivered from
it, as having their affections weanedin them. A secondevil of life in the
prosperous part of it is, that it makes a man to defer his repentance and
conversionto God. Thirdly, life is thus far dangerous, as it keeps a man from
suffering for Christ; the more that any man has to lose, the less commonly is
he willing to it. So again, as to the evils of life, ye may take it there also, that
life in this sense is not prejudicial to God's servants, but sanctified to them.
First, as it is a time of sinning, for so this present life is, and therein irksome to
God's children. Secondly, as it is a time of misery. And thirdly, as the time of
deferring of their reward; as long as God's children live they are kept out of
their inheritance. Thus we see how God's children have an interestin life and
death both, as making for their advantage, and it does belong unto them, as it
is elsewhere expressed(Romans 14:8). The secondis, "Norangels, nor
principalities, nor powers." First, not the good angels. Why? Whoever
suspectedthem? What need was there for the apostle to put in that? I answer
upon a double account. First, by wayof supposition. The apostle seems to
argue here, as he does also in anotherplace, "Though we, or an angel from
heaven," etc. (Galatians 1:8). Not as if they were likely to endeavour it, but if
they should do it, it would be to no purpose, for they should never effectit.
The goodangels may be conceivedto be possibly prejudicial to the saints and
servants of God ministerially, and in reference to their office;and that is, by
the withdrawing of their help to us, or as being instruments of inflicting
punishment and vengeance upon us; but thus now they are not to God's elect,
for they are still active for them to goodupon all occasions. We may
understand it of the devils. Thus (Revelation12:8) it is said that Michaeland

his angels fought, and the dragonand his angels. It is most certain that the
devil, that is, the chief and principal of them, hath very greatpower for a
while permitted unto him, as to the trouble of God's servants. I will instance
in one particular amongstthe rest, and that is his casting of evil and
troublesome fancies and conceits into the mind, and that sometimes with that
force and violence, as that the mind shall not be able to resist them or keep
them out. These are those kind of thoughts wherewith the devil does
oftentimes disturb and perplex the minds of Christians; but that these are no
way prejudicial to them in matter of guilt, or arguments for the questions of
God's love, or real ground of disquieting to them, will appearunto us upon
these considerations. First, from their manner of acting and proceeding in the
soul itself, wherein there is neither assentnor consentgiven unto them, but
only a bare apprehension of them. Secondly, this may also appear from the
suddenness and quickness of them; for they are commonly darted into the
mind without any connectionor dependence, whereas a man's own proper
thoughts are with more leisure, and deliberation, and subordination of one
thing to another. Thirdly, from the frequency and multiplicity of them,
togetherwith their unseasonableness;for they may be a thousand times in a
day passing as lightning into an house from one end of it to another, and in
continual motion. Fourthly, from the quality and condition of them, as being
contrary to the very light of nature, and the habitual frame and disposition of
the soul, which of itself is considerable in it. The main ground and foundation
of this restrainedness ofSatan's poweris intimated to us in the text, and that
is in reference to Christ; it is the love of God in Him, and therefore Satan
cannot separate us from it; and Christ is considerable ofus under a double
notion, of an head, and of an advocate. The third is neither things present nor
things to come. These shallnot be able neither to separate us from God's love
in Christ. First, not things present; they shall not be able to do it, whether we
take it in goodthings or in evil. This is a point very satisfactoryin the worst
times that are. No, nor yet, secondly, "Things to come," These shallnot do it
neither. "Things to come" — they are such things as are hid from men's
discerning, and they know not what to make of them; yea, but thus far they
are certain, as they shall make for the good of God's people; and therefore in
the place before cited (1 Corinthians 3:22), as things present are made a part
of their portion, and saidto be theirs; so are things to come likewise. And so

indeed upon the point, all things in the full latitude and extent of being. If we
speak of things to come, but as to this life, and as taken under the notion of
uncertainty, God's children are not at a loss here, but upon very goodterms;
but then if we speak of things to come as to the life following, and as under the
notion of certainty, here they are infinitely and transcendently glorious.
"Things to come" — these are the greatestinterestand concernmentof
believers, and such as above all others they do most reckonand depend upon.
It is the greatdisadvantage and prejudices of men of the world that their
happiness it is confined to things present.
(Thomas Horton, D. D.)
The triumphant hope of the Christian
R. S. Storrs, D.D.
Who can look upon the sun setting in the westand not be silent with wonder?
One who sees MontBlanc from the Lake of Geneva for the first time, lifting
itself in awful splendour and glory, does not break forth into words, but gazes
silently. So there are texts which, like the one before us, subdue us to silence.
I. THIS CROWNING LOVE OF GOD IS MADE KNOWN TO US IN THE
BIBLE. The sea swelling with its tides, this greatearth revolving on its axis,
and rushing forward in its orbit the systems of worlds, all speak ofthe power
of God. That He is a Godof beauty we read in the leaf, the flower, the sea
shell. But we do not find out from nature that God loves. When we
understand this love of God, then are we ready to understand redemption.
II. THIS LOVE FASTENS ITSELF UPON HUMAN BEINGS. Compared
with the mighty forces of nature, how weak we are;compared with eternity,
how brief is life. What is man that God should observe him, and, much less,
love him? Then we are so severedfrom God in capacityof mind, and so
impure. We can readily believe that God loves the Church, or this and that
eminent Christian, or the martyrs, but we doubt concerning ourselves. So
many a Christian walks this world with timid apprehensions instead of the
assurance ofone who walks a world he knows his Father rules. If he realised

that God loved him, then would he be joyous and triumphant — be strong for
any service.
III. THE ETERNITYOF THIS LOVE. We feel at times that God loves us.
But is this love eternal or fleeting? Is it fastenedupon our personality, or upon
our changing disposition? If we have been deceivedin the characterofone we
love, or if that characterhas undergone a change, our love changes. Now if
there is a radical change or degradationof character, God's love may change;
but aside from such change, it is not possible that anything can produce a
change in the love of God. The assurance ofthis is the wine of life, poured
from the chalice in God's hand, into our fainting hearts.
1. Deathcannot separate from the love of God. We go with a friend up to the
last moment on earth. We see the mind still active, the memory clear, the
noble impulses of the soul still predominant. Do you suppose that he who built
the cathedralis ended while the work of his hand calls forth the admiration of
mankind? We have the assurance in the resurrectionof Christ, that death
does not destroythe soul. Rather it sets the soul free from the lassitude and
inactiveness ofthe body. The body hampers and manacles the soul. Now, can
you conceive that death, which so adds to the spirit, can separate from the
love of God? Death does not affect our love for our departed friends, save to
augment it. How much more will it but augment the love of God.
2. But may not life? Life may reachits fourscore years and work many
changes. The vigour is gone, and the beauty; decrepitude has come. But what
is life to eternity? A dewdrop to the ocean;less than a single modest daisy to
the innumerable worlds above. Shall the decrepitude of this brief life stand
againstan eternity without decrepitude? No changes wroughtin the
circumstances oflife canaffectthe love of God. These are as nothing to the
God of infinite resources.To Him, what matters it whether we dwell in a
palace or a cottage?The favour is rather on the side of those who are in
adverse circumstances. We love these who struggle more than those who
enjoy; those who suffer patiently more than those who reign in royal
splendour. Christ, when in the world, did not take His apostles from among
the rulers; He made His abode with the poor rather than the rich. No; life

cannot bring from the love of God, but rather brings us nearer because ofits
trials, temptations, and weaknesses.
3. But may not other powers? There are mighty ones above. May not these
absorb the love of God? No;He takes care ofthe leastas of the greatest. No
star staggersin its course and halts to be caught in the graspof God and held
in its place. All the universe goes onevenly, quietly, surely. His love cannot be
exhausted any more than His power. Weaknessmakes more certainthis love.
He sees us struggling againsttemptation which angels cannotexperience, Nay,
more, this love came to us through Jesus, His only Son.
4. May not time produce this separation? In the unrolling cycles, may not
changes be wrought, powers developed, etc.? No;here come in the unchanging
nature and the eternity of God. The same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
Yesterday just gone, to-day which is here, and for ever — oh, what a launch of
thought!
5. May not space cause this separation? When we think of the vast distances in
the universe; that the diameter of this system is sevenhundred million miles;
that astronomers, by an approximate parallax, show us that yonder staris so
far awaythat it would take its light, travelling twelve millions of miles a
minute, seventy-two years to reachus; that the unresolved nebula is so far
awaythat its light would not reach us for sevenhundred thousand years.
When we think of these vast spaces, have we not reasonto be fearful that
there may be something in them that can separate us from God's love? No,
God is everywhere Master.Conclusion:
1. What a terrific poweris sin, since it canseparate us from this love of God!
More powerful than life or death, than all the universe.
2. What a privilege is this of the Christian to be safe in the love of God beyond
all power of harm, to have a portion with God for ever.
(R. S. Storrs, D.D.)
Things that cannotseparate from the love of God

Thomas Horton, D.D.
First, neither the height of worldly advancementnor the depth of worldly
abasement. First, honour and advancement, dignity and height of place or
preferment, that shall not do it. It is that which it sometimes does to some kind
of persons, when they are not more watchful of themselves;high-standing it is
apt to make men giddy, especiallywhen they shall look down upon others
which are far inferior to them. And there are greattemptations which are
now and then attending thereupon, of pride, and scornfulness, and security,
and self-confidence, andthe like. A child of God he shall not be afraid of that
which is high, as we find the phrase used in another sense, and upon another
occasion, in Ecclesiastes12:5. And so for abasementand lowness ofcondition;
he does not suffer from that neither, as St. Paul says of himself in another
place:"He knows how to abound, and he knows to be abased;to be full, and
to be hungry; to abound, and to suffer need." There is a depth of affliction as
well as an height of prosperity. And so for all other kinds and conditions of
abasements ofreproach, and contempt, and ignominy, which is castupon
them; these things they are digestedby them. He that is low in his owneyes he
can be content to be low in another's. Secondly, not the height of spiritual
enlargement, nor the depth of spiritual desertions. Spiritual enlargement, it is
an height, and a very greatone. Neither is the doctrine of assurancea doctrine
of pride; neither is the state of assurance a state of pride. So again, as to
spiritual desertions;the depth of that shall not hinder neither. This in
Scripture is sometimes calleda depth, as in Psalm130:1. Thirdly, take this
height and depth here spokenof, as to the mysteries, whether of faith or
providence, and ye shall find that neither these shall prove any disparagement
to God's servants. Lastly, neither height nor depth; that is, neither things
above nor things below. It is a large and comprehensive expressionwhich the
Scripture uses in suchlike cases, whenit will take in all, and so speak of
anything, as to leave nothing out. Yet if we will take it more restrainedly and
particularly, we may take it thus. First, take it as to the influences of Heaven.
These are such as many people, especiallynow at this time, have a great
regard unto, and that a greatdeal more than to other things which are more
to be regarded. But those which are the servants of God are above all these
heights. Those who are the children of God, and carefulto walk in His fear,

they shall not need to be "dismayed at the signs of heaven" (Jeremiah 10:2).
And so likewise we may take it as to the earth and the depths thereof. How
many dangers are we here incident to, and yet graciouslypreserved from
them? Now while the apostle is thus curious in this exactenumeration of
particulars, and such as are so full and comprehensive, there are two things
which we may gatherfrom it: First, the weakness ofour faith, especiallyin
times of temptation, which the Spirit of God is fain to provide for, by such a
complete dealing with us. Secondly, it shows the certainty of our own
salvation. Seeing none of these things fore-mentioned are able to hinder us, we
may from hence take notice of the sureness of the thing itself againstall
opposition. The secondis, the generalconclusionor main doctrine itself, and
that is, "that nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God in
Christ Jesus."Whereinagainwe have two branches more: First, the firmness
or immovableness of God's affection. That nothing whatsoevershallbe able to
separate us from it. This is agreeable to the whole current of Scripture (Psalm
125:1;Hebrews 12:28). Now the firmness and stability of God's people, in
regard of their spiritual estate, may be thus surrendered: First, from the
promise of God; it is a part of His gracious covenantwith them. Secondly, the
strength and powerof Christ, that does likewise laya ground for this truth;
there His ability joined to God's faithfulness, and the power of God joined to
the truth of God (Hebrews 7:25). Thirdly, it may be further evinced from the
nature of saving grace itself, and the work of regeneration, whichis a constant
and abiding principle, and so is signified to us to be in 1 John 3:9. Take
anything else in the world, besides true grace indeed, and ye shall find an
uncertainty in it; let it be education, or custom, or natural conscience, orthe
credit of religion; none of these things are sure to hold or to continue long. But
now for the powerof godliness, anda true gracious heart in goodearnest, it is
such as is lasting and remaining. Fourthly, a Christian's unmovableness is
confirmed from the intercessionof Christ. Whateverit is that Christ asks in
the behalf of believers, it is most undoubtedly granted unto them. Fifthly,
from the nature of election, which is a firm, and unchangeable decree;thus in
ver. 33 of this presentchapter, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's
elect?" And so much may suffice to have spokenof the first particular in this
secondgeneral, whichis the firmness or immovableness of God's affection
consideredin itself; that nothing is able to separate true Christians and

Jesus was inseparable love

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