Believers love Jesus with a deeper affection then they dare to give
to any other being. They would sooner lose father and mother then part
with Christ. They hold all earthly comforts with a loose hand, but they
carry him fast locked in their bosoms.

They voluntarily deny themselves for his sake, but they are not to
be driven to deny him. It is scant love which the fire of persecution
can dry up; the true believer’s love is a deeper stream than this. Men
have laboured to divide the faithful from their Master, but their
attempts have been fruitless in every age.

Neither crowns of honour, now frowns of anger, have untied this more
than Gordian knot. This is no every-day attachment which the world’s
power may at length dissolve. Neither man nor devil have found a key
which opens this lock.

Never has the craft of Satan been more at fault than when he has
exercised it in seeking to rend in sunder this union of two divinely
welded hearts. It is written, and nothing can blot out the sentence,
"The upright love thee." The intensity of the love of the
upright, however, is not so much to be judged by what it appears as by
what the upright long for.

It is our daily lament that we cannot love enough. Would that our
hearts were capable of holding more, and reaching further. Like Samuel
Rutherford, we sigh and cry, "Oh, for as much love as would go
round about the earth, and over heaven-yea, the heaven of heavens, and
ten thousand worlds-that I might let all out upon fair, fair, only fair
Christ."

Alas! our longest reach is but a span of love, and our affection is
but as a drop of a bucket compared with his deserts. Measure our love by
our intentions, and it is high indeed; ’tis thus, we trust, our Lord
doth judge of it. Oh, that we could give all the love in all hearts in
one great mass, a gathering together of all loves to him who is
altogether lovely!