The love of God, like every other attribute and perfection of Jehovah, is everlasting and unchangeable, even as the essence of God himself. This love is manifested to his people in Christ Jesus; he is the object in whom they are viewed and loved by the Father. As Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and for ever, so is God’s love towards them. Time, with all its concurring circumstances, can make no alteration or change, increase or diminution herein. But as to the sense and enjoyment of this love, the word of truth, and the experience of believers plainly testify of its ebbing and flowing, its fervour and abatement in the soul. Hence the necessity of those tender calls, kind warnings, and loving counsels, are…

Light and life are communicated from Jesus to his members, not merely to till their heads with gospel truths, as matters of speculation, or to make them fluent talkers about religion, but chiefly to affect their hearts, renew their minds, and cause them to be close and consistent walkers with Jesus. Without this we only seem to be religious; we deceive ourselves, and our religion is vain. We cannot stand approved in the sight of God, before men, nor to our own consciences. ‘The wise man’s eyes are in his head;’ he looks around him and sees the evil of sin, the vanity of this present world, that its gay pleasures, alluring pastimes, bewitching diversions, are the gilded bait of the god of this world,…