Inspirational verses can be listed here.

The Perfect Love of the Son of God

By John Wickie

“As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you” (John 15:9).

“Your parcel of most beautiful flowers came safe to hand last week, and I beg now to thank you for them with all my heart. I got them put in water, and they shed their loveliness and their sweet odours around my corner for many days. But more delightful far, than the loveliness of the flowers, is your kindness and sympathy in thinking of me at all, and taking the trouble to send them….

I like exceedingly to hear from, or about, beloved friends, and whatever may be interesting them. My world is now become a very small and narrow one; and there is constant need for me to watch and pray, that I do not permit myself to become the centre of it, the great point of interest in it, to myself. That would simply be spiritual death, and I dread it; and so feel thankful for every little help I can get, to be occupied about others; to think of, and be concerned about, and pray for, beloved ones everywhere. SELF-ABSORP­TION would be uttermost ruin.

Indeed, I may say, my little world is the Bible; and in­creasingly I am finding it everything that I can need. I have just been digging among the golden nuggets in Gal. 2:20 – a passage which I believe has given me many months (put it all together) of the happiest enjoyment possible on earth. It seems to me to contain the concentrated essence of the entire Word of God. O, to have the anointed eye, to discover clearly the won­ders comprehended in it. My last exercise on it was taken up with the closing words – “Who loved ME, and gave Himself for Me. “What an exquisitely delightful subject for believing medi­tation is this LOVE OF JESUS! And how fruitful is it! One hun­gering for a delicious apple or two, with which to comfort him­self (Song 2:3), no sooner attempts to pluck one, than the load­ed branches half bury him under a pelting shower of mellow fruit. How wonderful is this love of Jesus! And how delightful when a hearty faith appropriates it, and enjoys it, and rests in it! It is wonderful in the fact of it: that such an One would so love creatures like ourselves: and it is equally wonderful in the manner of it (I John 3:1). It is wonderful in what it has done, in what it is now doing, and in what it purposes to do for its blessed objects, for evermore.

How inexpressibly sweet is love! I know nothing near so sweet as to be worthily beloved, except it be to be the giver of the love rather than the receiver, and this last is far the sweeter. In regard to faith’s fellowship of love with Jesus, we have the two-fold joy of both getting and giving. We get, up to Christ’s uttermost capacity of loving us; and we give, up to our capacity of loving at all, when that capacity is enlarged by the Holy Ghost. What an incomparably happy life, then, is a life of communion with the Son of God in love! Let Him grant me such a life (and indeed He is doing it), and let those who prefer health, and riches, and outward comforts, have the whole of them for me. His love is not only incomparably sweet in itself, but it sweetens everything else to us. Trying providences cease to be bitter; and death loses every particle of repulsiveness. Were it not for His love. His very power, and wisdom, and holiness would be too terrible for us; but the omnipotence of LOVE, and the unerring wisdom of LOVE, and the perfect holiness of LOVE, constitute a vision which is most delightful to a sanctified and trusting heart. It sweetens this love to us to remember that it is FREE. Nay, so far from finding anything in us to attract it to us, it found everything in us to repel it. His only reasons for loving us, He finds in His own heart. The Lord loved us, because the Lord loved us: and that is all the explanation we can give of it (see Deut. 7:7-8). Indeed, we no sooner saw Him, than we hated both Him and His Father (John 15:24). So hated Him, that nothing less would satisfy our hatred, but His death. And yet, the murdered Son of God, yearned in love unutterable over His murderers. Even in accepting His murder from our hands (your hands and mine among the rest), He was dying in very love to us, to save us. How can we think calmly of a love like this? There is no love known, or knowable, by us, which we can compare with the love of the Son of God. Holy Scripture takes up every tender and loving relationship among us, in order to shadow it forth; but all these are rather contrasts than comparisons. It goes infinitely be­yond them all. It can be compared with nothing, save with the eternal Father for the Son. “As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you.” O saint of Jesus! believest thou this? If so, how unseemly to be disturbed about trifles; How much more un­seemly to squander the love which He prizes so highly upon the poor trash of this world! Thou art thy Saviour’s darling, weep no more! Let the joy of that fill thy cup of joy to the brim. He withholds nothing from me; He could not keep it. He gives thee constantly; He gives thee His all: He gives thee HIMSELF. It is more a delight for Him to give, than for thee to receive. In­deed, at this moment, Jesus in heaven has nothing more than thou hast who art still on earth. In pure love He shares every­thing with thee; His Sonship (John 1:12): His Glory (John 17:22); His throne (Rev. 3:21); His EVERYTHING (Rom. 8:11-17). Perfect love is unable to keep anything back from its beloved. And thou art the object of His perfect love. Many circumstances in our earthly lot will suggest to us the opposite of all this: but we must seek to walk by simple faith, and not at all by the inferences which our own beast-like, devilish wisdom prompts us to draw from what we see (James 3:15). And he who looks with the eye of faith on the providences of God towards him shall see nothing in them but PURE AND PERFECT LOVE.

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Abide in Christ and His Love

By Andrew Murray

“As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: abide ye in my love.” (John 15:9)

BLESSED Lord, enlighten our eyes to see aright the glory of this wondrous word. Open to our meditation the secret chamber of Thy love, that our souls may enter in, and find there their everlast­ing dwelling-place. How else shall we know aught of a love that passeth knowledge?
Before the Saviour speaks the word that invites us to abide in His love, He first tells us what that love is. What He says of it must give force to His invitation, and make the thought of not accepting it an impossibility: “Asthe Father hath loved me,soI have loved you!”


“Asthe Father hath loved me.”How shall we be able to form right conceptions of this love? Lord, teach us. God is love. Love is His very being. Love is not an attribute, but the very essence of His nature, the centre round which all His glorious attributes gather. It was because He was love that He was the Father, and that there was a Son. Love needs an object to whom it can give itself away, in whom it can lose itself, with whom it can make itself one. Because God is love, there must be a Father and a Son. The love of the Father to the Son is that Divine passion with which He delights in the Son, and speaks, “My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The Divine love is asaburning fire; in all its intensity and infinity it has but one object and but one joy, and that is the only-begotten Son. When we gather together all the attributes of God, — His infinity, His perfection, His immensity, His majesty, His omnipotence, — and con­sider them but as the rays of the glory of His love, we still fail in forming any conception of what that love must be. It is a love that passeth knowledge.
And yet this love of God to His Son must serve, 0 my soul, as the glass in which thou artto learn how Jesus loves thee. As one of His redeemed ones, thou art His delight, and all His desire is to thee, with the longing of a love which is stronger than death, and which many waters cannot quench. His heart yearns after thee, seeking thy fellowship and thy love. Were it needed, He could die again to possess thee. As the Father loved the Son, and could not live without Him, could not be God the blessed without Him, — so Jesus loves thee. His life is bound up in thine; thou art to Him inex­pressibly more indispensable and precious than thou ever canst know. Thou art one with Himself. “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.” What a love!
It is an eternal love. From before the founda­tion of the world — God’s Word teaches us this — the purpose had been formed that Christ should be the Head of His Church, that He should have a body in which His glory could be set forth. In that eternity He loved and longed for those who had been given Him by the Father; and when He came and told His disciples that He loved them, it was indeed not with a love of earth and of time, but with the love of eternity. And it is with that same infinite love that His eye still rests upon each of us here seeking to abide in Him, and in each breathing of that love there is indeed the power of eternity. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.”
It is a perfect love. It gives all, and holds nothing back. “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand.” And just so Jesus loves His own: all He has is theirs. When it was needed, He sacrificed His throne and crown for thee: He did not count His own life and blood too dear to give for thee. His righteousness, His Spirit, His glory, even His throne, all are thine. This love holds nothing, nothing back, but, in a manner which no human mind can fathom, makes thee one with itself. 0 wondrous love! to love us even as the Father loved Him, and to offer us this love as our everyday dwelling.
It is a gentle and most tender love. As we think of the love of the Father to the Son, we see in the Son everything so infinitely worthy of that love. “When we think of Christ’s love to us, there is nothing but sin and unworthiness to meet the eye. And the question comes, How can that love within the bosom of the Divine life and its perfections be compared to the love that rests on sinners? Can it indeed be the same love? Blessed be God, we know it is so. The nature of love is always one, however different the objects. Christ knows of no other law of love but that with which His Father loved Him. Our wretchedness only serves to call out more distinctly the beauty of love, such as could not be seen even in Heaven. With the tenderest compassion He bows to our weakness, with patience inconceivable He bears with our slow­ness, with the gentlest loving-kindness He meets our fears and our follies. It is the love of the Father to the Son beautified, glorified in its con­descension, in its exquisite adaptation to our needs.
And it is an unchangeable love. “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end” “The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee.” The promise with which it begins its work in the soul is this: “I shall not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” And just as our wretchedness was what first drew it to us, so the sin, with which it is so often grieved, and which may well cause us to fear and doubt, is but a new motive for it to hold to us all the more. And why? We can give no reason but this: “As the Father hath loved me, so I have loved you.”

And now, does not this love suggest themotive,themeasure,and themeansof that surrender by which we yield ourselves wholly to abide in Him?

This love surely supplies a motive. Only look and see how this love stands and pleads and prays Gaze, 0 gaze on the Divine form, the eternal glory, the heavenly beauty, the tenderly pleading gentle­ness of the crucified love, as it stretches out its pierced hands and says, “Oh, wilt thou not abide with me? wilt thou not come and abide in me?” It points thee up to the eternity of love whence it came to seek thee. It points thee to the Cross, and all it has borne to prove the reality of its affection, and to win thee for itself. It reminds thee of all it has promised to do for thee, if thou wilt but throw thyself unreservedly into its arms. It asks thee whether, so far as thou hast come to dwell with it and taste its blessedness, it hath not done well by thee. And with a Divine authority, mingled with such an inexpressible tenderness that one might almost think he heard the tone of reproach in it, it says, “Soul, as the Father hath loved me, so I have loved you: abide in my love.” Surely there can be but one answer to such pleading: Lord Jesus Christ! here I am. Henceforth Thy love shall be the only home of my soul: in Thy love alone will I abide.

That love is not only the motive, but also the measure, of our surrender to abide in it. Love gives all, but asks all. It does so, not because it grudges us aught, but because without this it cannot get possession of us to fill us with itself. In the love of the Father and the Son, it was so. In the love of Jesus to us, it was so. In our entering into His love to abide there, it must be so too; our surrender to it must have no other measure than its surrender to us. 0 that we understood how the love that calls us has infinite riches and fulness of joy for us, and that what we give up for its sake will be re­warded a hundredfold in this life! Or rather, would that we understood that it is a love with a height and a depth and a length and a breadth that passes knowledge! How all thought of sacrifice or surrender would pass away, and our souls be filled with wonder at the unspeakable privilege of being loved with such a love, of being allowed to come and abide in it for ever.

And if doubt again suggest the question: But is it possible, can I always abide in His love? listen how that love itself supplies the only means for the abiding in Him: It is faith in that love which will enable us to abide in it. If this love be indeed so Divine, such an intense and burning passion, then surely I can depend on it to keep me and to hold me fast. Then surely all my unworthiness and feebleness can be no hindrance. If this love be indeed so Divine, with infinite power at its command, I surely have a right to trust that it is stronger than my weakness; and that with its almighty arm it will clasp me to its bosom, and suffer me to go out no more. I see how this is the one thing my God requires of me. Treating me as a reasonable being endowed with the wondrous power of willing and choosing, He can­not force all this blessedness on me, but waits till I give the willing consent of the heart. And the token of this consent He has in His great kindness ordered faith to be, — that faith by which utter sin-fulness casts itself into the arms of love to be saved, and utter weakness to be kept and made strong. 0 Infinite Love! Love with which   the   Father loved the Son! Love with which the Son loves us! I can trust thee, I do trust thee. 0 keep me abiding in Thyself.
1It is difficult to understand why in our English Bible one Greek word should in the first sixteen verses of John xv. have had three different translations:abidein ver. 4,continuein ver. 9, andremainin vers. 11 and 16. The Revised Version has of course kept the one word,abide.

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Quaint Rhymes by a Quondam Cricketer

By C.T. Studd

Old Daniel was a Dreadnought!
If he were here today,
He’d make it hot for the pious lot
Who don’t do as they say.


He didn’t speak behind folks’ backs,
But met them face to face;
He called spades spades, and dubbed knaves knaves,
And always proved his case.

He neither cared for place nor power,
Nor feared the lion’s den;
A godly cause will lock the jaws
Of beasts, or jealous men.

Whatever God at any time
Might write upon the wall,
He’d up and say, without delay,
To King an Court and all.

Dan didn’t say “Belshazzar, Sire,
Your faults are peccadilloes”;
He hit his sin with a rolling pin,
And not with feather pillows.

Dan didn’t sugar-coat his pills,
Half doses didn’t please him;
To save a life he’d use the knife
And bleed a fool to ease him.

Old Daniel ran a college once
Which turned out three invincibles;
A verse or two will let you know
What Daniel taught as principles.

Dare to be a dreadnought,
With purpose true and firm;
Dare to live on simple fare,
And don’t become a worm.

Dare to be a Dreadnought,
Dare to beard a King;
Tell him all the truth and don’t
Emasculate the thing.

Dare to be a Dreadnought,
Faithful, loyal, bold,
Scorning under any threats
To worship man or gold.

Dare to be a Dreadnought,
Not a dressed up ‘toff,”
Nor glorified policeman,
Nor gun that won’t go off.

Make a bold confession,
Thought it means the rod;
Dare to kick the devil hard,
And dare to trust in God.
—C.T. Studd.

The Cause and Cure of Impotence
We talked of evangelising the world in the present generation
In eighteen hundred and ninety-six with great deliberation.
But we’re not much nearer the end of the job though seventeen years are gone.
The job is right with the Will of god and certainly ought to be done.

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Let Me Burn Out for Thee

By Bessie F. Hatcher

For Sheet music see it under Miscellaneous to the left.

Bessie F. Hatcher wrote the following hymn:

Oh God, the world is lost in sin, And so few that seem to care!
Many of whom profess Thy name no burden will help to bear.
We need a passion, Lord, for souls, to bring the lost back to Thee;
Our hearts must be stirred, till all have heard at least once of Calvary.


Chorus:
Let me burn out for Thee, dear Lord, Burn and wear out for Thee.
Don’t let me rust, or my life be a failure, my God to Thee.
Use me and all I have, dear Lord, And get me so close to Thee
That I feel the throb of the great heart of God,
Until I burn out for Thee.

How cold has been our giving, Lord! How selfish our love has been,
Keeping from those who never heard the gospel that saves from sin!
How often we have turned aside, Neglecting to do our part,
Forgetting Thy tears and agony, Forgetting Thy bleeding heart!

Meet us and break us up, dear Lord, Until driven to our knees.
Bare to our gaze Thy cross and love, Of blood-baptized Calvary.
Speak till we hear again Thy call, And hold nothing back from Thee.
Oh, burn on our hearts the hopeless wail of souls damned eternally.

O God, with shame I humbly bow, In tears and with contrite heart.
Forgive me for the broken vows, And failure to do may part.
I heed Thy call and say, “Fare-well,” To all that would hinder me;
Thy grace and Thy love to lost ones, tell, And my life burn out for Thee.

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