August 22

"Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I am married unto you." Jeremiah 3:14.

Let the Christian reader call to mind the period and the circumstances of his first espousals to Jesus. If there ever was a blissful period of your life—if a spot of verdure in the remembrance of the past, on which the sunlight ever rests—was it not the time, and is it not the place where your heart first expanded with the love of Jesus? You have, it may be, trod many a thorny path since then; you have traveled many a weary step of your pilgrimage—have buffeted many storms, have waded through many deep afflictions, and fought many severe battles, but all have well-near faded from your memory; but the hour and the events of your "first love," these you never have forgotten, you never can forget. Oh ever to be loved, ever to be remembered with deep songs of joy, with adoring gratitude to free and sovereign grace, the period when the chains of your bondage were broken—when your fettered soul broke from its thraldom, and sprang into the liberty of the sons of God—when light discovered your darkness, and that darkness rolled away before its increasing luster—when the Spirit wounded you, then healed that wound with the precious balm of Gilead—when He gave you sorrow, then soothed that sorrow by a view of the crucified Lamb of God—when faith took hold of Jesus, and brought the blessed assurance into the soul, "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine;" and when Jesus whispered—oh, how tender was His voice!—"Your sins, which were many, are all forgiven you; go in peace." Blissful moment! Oh that the Lord should ever have reason to prefer the charge, "you have left your first love."

It is an affecting and humbling truth that the grace of love in a child of God may greatly and sadly decline. We speak, let it be remembered, not of the destruction of the principle, but of the decline of its power. This spiritual and influential truth cannot be too frequently nor too strongly insisted upon—that though faith, and love, and hope, and zeal, and their kindred graces may greatly decline in their vigor, fervor, and real growth, yet that they may entirely fail even in their greatest decay, or severest trial, the Word of God assures us can never be. To believe the opposite of this is to deny their Divine origin, their spiritual and immortal character, and to impeach the wisdom, power, and faithfulness of God. Not a grain of the true wheat can ever be lost in the sifting, not a particle of the pure gold in the refining. Remember, that though your love has waxed cold, the love of your God and Father towards you has undergone no diminution—not the shadow of a change has it known.

What an encouragement to return to Him again! Not one moment has God turned His back upon you, though you have turned your back upon Him times without number. His face has always been towards you; and it would have shone upon you with all its melting power, but for the clouds which your own waywardness and sinfulness have caused to obscure and hide from you its blessed light. Retrace your steps and return again to God. Though you have been a poor wanderer, and have left your first love—though your affections have strayed from the Lord, and your heart has gone after other lovers—still God is gracious and ready to pardon; He will welcome you back again for the sake of Jesus, His beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased; for this is His own blessed declaration—"If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; then will I visit their transgressions with a rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail."