He proceeds with his subject—God is love. His object, as announced, is not so much to elucidate the thought or idea of the text, as to dislodge from the minds of his hearers, the dread and aversion for God, existing in all unregenerate men. He insists, in the first place, that it is not as a God of love, that the Deity is regarded by mankind—but simply as God, as a being mysterious and dreadful, a being who has displeasure towards them in his heart. This arises from two causes—the first, that they are ignorant of this great and awfully mysterious Being—the second, that they have sinned against him. This feeling then is displaced first by the incarnation of the Deity in the person of his Son, so that we may know him and love him as a Father and a friend; and secondly, by the free pardon of our sin, through the sacrifice of the Cross. The division is rather awkward; but it serves the purpose of the preacher, who thus brings out some of the most sublime peculiarities of the Gospel, and applies them with overwhelming force and pathos to the sinner's heart. Under the first head, he shows, in language of uncommon energy, that it is impossible for man, in his present state, to regard a being so vast, so mysterious, and so little known as God, except with superstitious dread. "All regarding him," says he, "is inscrutable; the depths of his past eternity, the mighty and unknown extent of his creation, the secret policy or end of his government—a government that embraces an infinity of worlds, and reaches forward to an infinity of ages; all these leave a being so circumscribed in his faculties as man, so limited in his duration, and therefore so limited in his experience, in profoundest ignorance of God; and then the inaccessible retirement in which this God hides himself from the observation of his creatures here below, the clouds and darkness which are about the pavilion of his throne, the utter inability of the powers of man to reach beyond the confines of that pavilion, render vain all attempts to fathom the essence of God, or to obtain any distinct conception of his person or being, which have been shrouded in the deep silence of many centuries, insomuch that nature, whatever it may tell us of his existence, places between our senses and this mighty cause a veil of interception."
It is not unnatural to dread such a being. Nature, though full of God, furnishes no clear and satisfying evidence of his designs; for sunshine and shower, green fields and waving harvests are intermingled with tempests and hurricane, blight and mildew, destruction and death. "While in one case we have the natural affection and unnumbered sweets of many a cottage, which might serve to manifest the indulgent kindness of him who is the universal parent of the human family; we have on the other hand the cares, the heart-burnings, the moral discomforts, often the pining sickness, or the cold and cheerless poverty, or, more palpably, the fierce contests and mutual distractions even among civilized men; and lastly, and to consummate all, the death,—the unshaken and relentless death with which generation after generation, whether among the abodes of the prosperous and the happy, or among the dwellings of the adverse and unfortunate, after a few years are visited, laying all the varieties of human fortune in the dust,—these all bespeak if not a malignant, an offended, God."
But this vague uncertainty and dread are corrected and displaced by the incarnation of the Deity in the person of Christ—"the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person." "The Godhead then became palpable to human senses, and man could behold, as in a picture, and in distinct personification, the very characteristics of the Being that made him."
Upon this idea, a favorite one with Dr. Chalmers, he dwells with the profoundest interest, presenting it with a strength of conception and exuberance of illustration which makes it clear and palpable to the minds of all. How his heart glows, almost to bursting, with the sublime and thrilling idea that God is manifest in the flesh. How he pours out, as in a torrent of light, the swelling images and emotions of his throbbing spirit. "We could not scale the height of that mysterious ascent which brings us within view of the Godhead. It is by the descent of the Godhead unto us that this manifestation has been made; and we learn and know it from the wondrous history of him who went about doing good continually. We could not go in search of the viewless Deity, through the depths and vastnesses of infinity, or divine the secret, the untold purposes that were brooding there. But in what way could a more palpable exhibition have been made, than when the eternal Son, enshrined in humanity, stepped forth on the platform of visible things, and there proclaimed the Deity? We can now reach the character of God in the human looks, in the human language of Him who is the very image and visible representative of the Deity; we see it in the tears of sympathy he shed; we hear it in the accents of tenderness which fell from his lips. Even his very remonstrances were those of a deep and gentle nature; for they are remonstrances of deepest pathos—the complaints of a longing spirit against the sad perversity of men bent on their own ruin."
Not content with this clear and ample exhibition of his views, he returns to it, as if with redoubled interest, and though presenting no new conception upon the point, delights to pour upon it the exuberant radiance of his teeming imagination. The hearers, too, are as interested as he, and catch with delight the varying aspects of his peculiar oratory. In fact, their minds are in perfect sympathy and harmony with his; and tears start to every eye, as he bursts out, as if applying the subject to himself, in the following beautiful and affecting style:—"Previous to this manifestation, as long as I had nothing before me but the unseen God, my mind wandered in uncertainty, my busy fancy was free to expatiate, and its images filled my heart with disquietude and terror; but in the life and person and history of Jesus Christ, the attributes of the Deity are brought down to the observation of the senses, and I can no longer mistake them, when, in the Son, who is the express image of his Father, I see them carried home to my understanding by the evidence and expression of human organs—when I see the kindness of the Father, in the tears that fell from the Son at the tomb of Lazarus—when I see his justice blended with his mercy, in the exclamation, 'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!' by Jesus Christ, uttered with a tone more tender than human bosom or human sympathy ever uttered—I feel the judgment of God himself flashing conviction on my conscience, and calling me to repent, while his wrath is suspended, and he still waiteth to be gracious!"
But a more distinct and well-grounded reason for distrust and fear in reference to the Deity arises from the consciousness of guilt. In spite of ourselves, in spite of our false theology, we feel that God has a right to be offended with us, that he is offended with us, and not only so, but that we deserve his displeasure. This he shows is counteracted by the doctrine of the atonement: "Herein is love, not that we loved him, but that he loved us, and sent his Son into the world to be a propitiation for our sins." By the fact of the incarnation, a conquest is gained over the imagination haunted with the idea of an unknown God; so also by that of the atonement, a conquest is gained over the solid and well-grounded fear of guilt. This idea the Doctor illustrates with equal force and beauty, showing that by means of the Sacrifice of the Cross, justice and mercy are brought into harmony, in the full and free pardon of the believing penitent. By this means the great hindrance to free communion with God is taken away. Guilt is cancelled, for the sake of Him who died, and the poor trembling sinner is taken to the bosom of Infinite Love. "In the glorious spectacle of the Cross, we see the mystery revealed, and the compassion of the parent meeting in fullest harmony with the now asserted and now vindicated prerogative of the Lawgiver. The Gospel is a halo of all the attributes of God, and yet the pre-eminent manifestation there is of God as love, which will shed its lustre amid all the perfections of the Divine nature. And here it should be specially remarked, that the atonement was made for the sins of the whole world; God's direct and primary object being to vindicate the truth and justice of the Godhead. Instead of taking from his love, it only gave it more emphatic demonstration; for, instead of love, simple and bending itself without difficulty to the happiness of its objects, it was a love which, ere it could reach the guilty being it groaned after, had to force the barriers of a necessity which, to all human appearance, was insuperable." With this fine idea the Doctor concludes his discourse, presenting it with a mingled tenderness and vehemence of style and tone perfectly irresistible. "The love of God," he exclaims, "with such an obstacle and trying to get over it, is a higher exhibition than all the love which radiates from his throne on all the sinless angels. The affirmation that God is love, is strengthened by that other, to him who owns the authority of Scripture, that God so loved the world—I call on you to mark the emphatic so—as to give his only-begotten Son. 'He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all;' or that expression, 'herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and gave his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.' There is a moral, a depth, an intensity of meaning, a richness of sentiment that Paul calls unsearchable, in the Cross of Christ, that tells emphatically that God is righteousness, and that God is love."
Such is a feeble and imperfect outline of a rich and eloquent discourse, from one of the richest and most expressive texts in the Bible. But we cannot transfer to the written or printed page the tone, look and manner, the vivida vis, the natural and overwhelming energy, the pathos and power of tone, which thrill the hearer as with the shocks of a spiritual electricity. It is this peculiar energy which distinguishes Chalmers, and which distinguishes all great orators. His mind is on fire with his subject, and transfers itself all glowing to the minds of his hearers. For the time being all are fused into one great whole, by the resistless might of his burning eloquence. In this respect Chalmers has been thought to approach, nearer than any other man of modern times, the style and tone of Demosthenes. His manner has a torrent-vehemence, a sea-like swell and sweep, a bannered tramp as of armies rushing to deadly conflict. With one hand on his manuscript, and the other jerked forward with electric energy, he thunders out his gigantic periods, as if winged with "volleyed lightning." The hearers are astonished,—awed,—carried away,—lifted up as on the wings of the wind, and borne "whithersoever the master listeth."