May 15

Whom the Lord lobeth he chasteneth. — HER. xii. 6.

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. — REV. iii. 19.

LOVE and discipline, tenderness and fidelity, God our Father and God our Teacher, these two are the supreme facts of religion. Our Lord here defines his own action in his relation to the chosen. He is carrying forward two processes in us, and the command which follows in the same text has two parts, each of them in correspondence. Chastisement should bring the soul to repentance, and love ought to stimulate to a zeal in due proportion. The double declaration is the basis on which the double precept rests.

The orbit of a planet is determined by the play of balanced forces, centrifugal and centripetal, so the development of spiritual life will be regulated by the two principles here defined. By chastisement we are made to see the awful depth of sin, and by love, the sublime height of the divine holiness. In chastisement we come to know self, the creature, and in love we come to have some notion of him, the Creator. The two aspects of redemption are not hostile, but each is the complement of the other, — discipline and privilege, two messengers of the same king, two pages of the same lesson, two facts making up together the one supreme truth. He loves, and therefore he educates. Loving us, he makes to us a wonderful offer; he offers to give us himself, and chastening us, he makes it possible that we should accept such an offer. The affection is wonderful, the discipline is severe, but the vital link, uniting the two, is the Lord Jesus himself.

James G. Riggs

I thank thee for both smile and frown,

And for the gain and loss;

I praise thee for the future crown

And for the present cross.

MRS. JANE CREWDSON.