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Go and lay your icy heart upon
His flaming heart of love!
(From Octavius Winslow's, "Christ, the Everlasting Father")
The everlasting love of Christ never veers, never
chills, and knows not the shadow of a change.
Measuring Christ's love to us by our love to Him,
we often imagine that it must necessarily be
affected by the cold, chilling atmosphere of our
hearts; that when our love to Him ebbs, His love
to us also ebbs; that when ours proves fickle
and treacherous, wandering after some creature
idol, then His love, exacting reprisals, in like
manner starts off, and leaves us for another
and perhaps more faithful object.
No! the love of Jesus to His saints, is as eternal
as His being, is as unchangeable as His nature.
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"
Yield not, then, to despondency, beloved, when
you discover the mercury of your love sink, even
though it be to freezing point.
There may be times when you can scarcely
detect its existence, so faint its beating pulse,
so congealed its warm current.
But since Christ's love is not the effect, but the
cause of ours to Him, and is an everlasting love,
glowing in His heart ages that cannot be numbered
or measured, before one pulse throbbed in ours;
we may take comfort in the assurance that no
variation of affection in us towards the Savior
can in the slightest degree affect the tenderness,
depth, or immutability of the great love with
which He has loved us.
Look, then, to Christ's love to you,
and not to your love to Christ!
Go and lay your icy heart upon His flaming
heart of love! Go to His cross, and there muse
upon the love that bore your sins, that suffered
and bled, that wept, and groaned, and died for you,
paying the death penalty of your transgressions;
and, while you thus muse, the flame will kindle,
the fire will burn, and your tongue will break forth
into singing!
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