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into the very fabric of the soul, that like some cloth dyed in grain, as long as two threads hold together they will retain the tint. We have to thank God for such instances of love stronger than death, which make it easier for 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. Few of us have reached middle life, who do not, looking back, see our track strewed with the gaunt skeletons of dead friendships, and dotted with oaks of weeping,' waving green and mournful over graves, and saddened by footprints striking away from the line of march, and leaving us the more solitary for their departure. 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, to Whom 'a thousand years,' that can corrode so much of earthly love, are in their power to change 'as one day,' and one day, which can hold so few of the expressions of our love, may be as a thousand years' in the multitude and richness of the gifts which it can be expanded to contain. The whole of what He has been to any past, He is to us to-day. The God of Jacob is our refuge.' All these old world stories of loving care and guidance may be repeated in our lives.

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So we may bring the blessedness of all the past into the present, and calmly face the misty future, sure that it cannot rob us of His love.

'Do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,

To the wide world and all her fading sweets,'

it matters not, if only our hearts are stayed on His love, which neither things present nor things to come can alter or remove. Looking on all the flow of ceaseless change, the waste and fading, the alienation and cooling, the decrepitude and decay of earthly affection, we can lift up with gladness, heightened by the contrast, the triumphant song of the ancient Church: '0 give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: because His mercy endureth for ever.'

IV. The love of God is present everywhere.

The Apostle ends his catalogue with a singular trio of antagonists: '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 of the created universe, flings, as it were, with one rapid toss, into that large room the whole that it can contain, and triumphs over it all.

As the former clause proclaimed the powerlessness of Time, so this proclaims the powerlessness of that other great mystery 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.

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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, to grasp with vividness, and not altogether a glad one to a sinful soul, is all softened and glorified, as some solemn Alpine cliff of bare rock is when the tender morning light glows on it, when it is thought of as the Omnipresence

of Love. 'Thou God seest me,' may be a stern word, if the God Who sees be but a mighty Maker or a righteous Judge. As reasonably might 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 wall, as expect any thought of God but one to make a man read that grand one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm with joy: 'If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there.' So may a man say shudderingly 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 cast over the marble whiteness of that solemn thought the warm hue of life, and change the form of our words into this of our text: 'Nor height nor depth shall be able to separate us from the love of God.'

In that great ocean of the Divine love we live and move and have our being, floating in it like some sea flower which 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 cower before the fixed gaze of some stony god, looking on us unmoved like those Egyptian deities that sit pitiless with idle hands on their laps, and wide-open lidless eyes gazing out across the sands. 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 glad that we are ever in His Presence, and desire, as the height of all felicity and the power for all goodness, to walk all the day long in the light of His countenance, till the day come when we shall receive the crown of our perfecting in that we shall be ever with the Lord.'

The recognition of this triumphant sovereignty of love over all these real and supposed antagonists makes us, too, lords over them, and delivers us from the temptations which some of them present us to separate ourselves from the 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 unseen world and from craven fear of men. So we are emancipated from absorption in the present and from careful thought for the future. So we are at home everywhere, and every corner of 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.'

I do not forget the closing words of this great text. I have not ventured to include them in our present subject, because they would have introduced another wide region of thought to be laid down on our already too narrow

canvas.

But remember, I beseech you, that this love of God is explained by our Apostle to be 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. It is not, as some representations would make it, a vague, nebulous light diffused

through space as in a chaotic, half-made universe, but all gathered in that great Light 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 gathered on a hearth that they may give warmth to all that are in the house. 'God so loved the world'-not merely so much, but in such a fashion-that' -that what? Many people would leap at once from the first to the last clause of the verse, and regard eternal life for all and sundry as the only adequate expression of the universal love of God. Not so does Christ speak. Between that universal love and its ultimate purpose and desire for every man He inserts two con litions, one on God's part, one on man's. God's love reaches its end, namely, the bestowal of eternal life, by means of a Divine act and a human response. 'God so loved the world, that He gave His onlybegotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 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 can break, no shock of change can snap, no time can rot, no distance can stretch to breaking. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 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.'

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A VISIT TO THE ITALIAN CHURCHES:

BY THE REV. W. ARTHUR.

(Concluded from page 457.)

Ox the Sunday afternoon as I sat in Mr. Piggott's in came Capellini, and in a tone that might have been that of a lost battle cried: O, woe, our soldiers the colonel of theth has prohibited his men from coming to the meetings. He says that the Evangelicals are revolutionists, that they will make the men false to their military duty and to the king. And it affects forty men.' A day or two later when I asked him what news of the colonel, he looked both bright and solemn: Is it not wonderful,' he said, how the Lord does raise up one after another? I thought we should have had to seek some Member of Parliament to ask a question in the House as to whether the soldiers really were entitled to religious liberty or

not.

But just see! the colonel of the th says to the other colonel : "You don't know what you are doing. These Evangelicals are no revolutionists. Their men are the most to be relied upon of any I have-if I want men to trust, men to keep the books and so on, they are the men." And so the hostile colonel, who meant not persecution but good discipline, took off his interdict. In such ways has the Lord from the beginning led Capellini on, overcoming obstacles which he had neither influence nor power to remove.

Long before our Missionary Society, or even that of the Methodist Episcopal Church (which for some time sustained him), had taken up Capellini's work, our countryman, Admiral

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Fishbourne, had stood by him in straits with good effect, and at different times have others, both American and English. The members of this Military Church may belong to any denomination which they prefer, and when they leave Rome it is understood that they shall, whether in garrison or discharged from the service, connect themselves with any Evangelical Church which may be nearest to them. As they return to their homes after a short term of service, they have, in several cases, already carried the good seed into their towns and villages, and thus is a really spontaneous agency raised up simply by the self-diffusing power of the Gospel. Capellini himself is Capellini himself is one of the instances, of which in Italy there are many, in which the instrumentality of conversion was only part of a stray Bible; a portion picked up in a barrack yard, where he was a non-commissioned officer. Before either we or any other Society had come to his support, he had, after leaving the service, spent in his work the whole of some little patrimony of his own in the town of Spezia, whence he came.

I may here make a remark affecting statements that reports sent to England from Mission fields are often exaggerated. Since my return I have seen two separate reports of the reception of new members into the Military Church last Christmas. The one was written by an Italian for Italian readers in the Civiltà Evangelica; the other by an English Missionary for English readers in the Watchman. Now, the numbers both of persons attending and of communicants were stated considerably higher in the account put out in Italy, than in that sent to England. As to attendants it was evident that one writer had guessed and the other counted. As to communicants the one had, I presume, included the absent on duty who would, if able, have been present;

the other had probably taken just the number he saw then and there; and instead of anybody being wrong, in all likelihood both were right, each from his own point of view.

Our last evening in Rome was delightfully spent. It had been agreed to hold a united meeting for the members of all the Churches, to manifest in the true spirit of the Alliance that union which consists not in human forms or names, in human centres or heads, but lies deeper and higher than all of them, existing when forgotten or obscured, ay, even when, in men's longing after uniformity, denied. The largest Church was selected as the place of meeting, and the largest happened to be the Methodist one in the Via della Scrofa. The platform was full, the body of the house full, the gallery-I think the only one I had seen in a Protestant church in Italy

full, and the Military Church at the side was thrown open to receive the overflow, those composing which could hear in that position and partly

see.

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The place and the assembly would have looked pleasing anywhere, but on seeing it there it seemed as if one could only say: What hath God wrought!' There was that night no want of union, or of the sense of essential oneness. No man felt under any fear of being called upon to surrender or compromise his own particular opinions; no man claimed that those opinions should be accepted as the measure of another man's fidelity to the truth of Christ. The meeting was no attempt to show a front without a diversity. It presented the plain strong truth, unity in diversity. The Lord one, the Faith one, the Baptism one. The forms, the fillings up, the 'helps' and the 'governments' more or less diverse. Here we had none but Christ offering sacrifice or intercession for any, none baptized into any other name than that of Christ. Unity in all which Holy Scripture has laid down as con

stituting the essentials; diversity in other matters. Mutual recognition for the unity; mutual respect for the diversities. One Church, but several denominations. This truth, like all truths, is catholic and elevating, while every kind of artificial uniformity narrows the mind and begets intolerance, and certainly not Protestant uniformity less than Greek or Romish, and not Italian less than Scotch or English.

The singing was hearty; the whole of the proceedings lively, sympathetic, encouraging. Mr. Piggott was the Chairman. Each member of the Deputation spoke. All was cordially received, whether it was English translated, sentence after sentence, by Mr. Piggott, or whether it was a foreigner's faulty Italian. But the height of feeling was touched when Gavazzi, in replying to the addresses of the Deputation, alluded to the national struggles and successes as having led up to the point which rendered possible such a gathering of Roman Evangelicals, 'under the nose of the Cardinal Vicar' -alluding to the fact that the palace of that dignitary lay just on the other side of the street; and when rapidly noting the chief stages of the struggle, he from them deduced the hope of glorious things to come. It was a burst of oratory, and its response was a thrill of feeling, such as it would be worth while going far to see and hear. After him came another genuine Italian, Mazzarella, sweetly speaking the sweetest of tongues, and making it charm the ear even of foreigners.

Often during the evening did the thought arise, I did hope to live to see the Gospel freely preached in Rome, but never had I faith to look forward to such a meeting as this.' And calling to mind, in addition, the two previous sights in the same place, -the meeting of the Military Church, and that at Sciarelli's lecture,-again and again did I feel that had Mr. Heald been alive to see the benefit

which that building was yielding, not only to our own Mission, but to the general cause of the united denominations and to the Evangelical Alliance, he would have greatly rejoiced, and felt that he had a living reward.

The next morning, surrounded at the station by the same fraternal faces which at our coming had given us welcome,-faces now dearer as well as more familiar,—we took leave of the Eternal City, glad of having seen proof that the silent seed which grows while men sleep, and comes to fruit in ways they may not scan, was surely taking root within the walls.

As we had passed at one bound from Florence to Rome, so did we now from Rome to Naples. It was not that in either case there were no Evangelical stations in intervening places, but that we had not time to stay. Any such stations as existed were, however, few, and not strong. Urgent representations had been

made to us from some of them to procure a visit. Perugia, Frascati, Velletri, Caserta, were all mentioned to us. It was one feature of the work everywhere, that all engaged in it seemed to wish to have our eyes used as to what they themselves were doing. We, on our part, did personally take observations, slight it is true and passing, of all that we could. But the value of a slight and passing observation is different, if made on a single station, from what it is if made on a great many in succession, for in the latter case one observation helps to check the impressions made by another. is also different if made by men who for life have been confined to one sphere and one type of operation, from what it is if made by men who have long been accustomed to see operations in many spheres and of many types. I do not say that we never saw a trace of what on previous occasions I had found in Italy, and when once discovered had cordially

It

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