# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1901_S21
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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Vol. XXII.

Ghe Lutheran Pioneer.

A MISSIONARY MONTHLY.

PuBLISHED BY THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN SyNnopIcAL ConFERENCE oF NorTH AMERICA.

R. A. BISCHOFF, Editor.

Entered at the Post Ofiice at St. Louis, Mo., as second-class matter.

St. Louis, Mo., June, 1901.

No. 6.

Love that Passeth Knowledge.

Higher than the highest heaven,
Deeper than the deepest hell,
Is God’s love to guilty sinners,
Who, through disobedience, fell.
Why love them so?
I do not know: -
Redeeming love, and it alone,
Can break a heart as hard as stone.

Purer than the purest fountain,
Wider than the widest sea,
Sweeter than the swectest music,
Is God’s love in Christ to me.
Why love me so?
I do not know:
I only know
That nothing less than love Divine
Could save this sinful soul of mine.

Stronger than all evil powers
Is the fortress of our faith.
“Our life is hid with Christ in God,”’
In Him we’ll triumph over death.
Why love us so?
I do not know:
I only know
That for His boundless love to me
Y'll praise Him through eternity.

Swifter than the swiftest seraph
Ever flew from realms above,
Swifter than the lightning flashes,
Is God’s swifter wing of love.
" “Before I called
He answered me.”
He loves me so.
But why? I'll know when I have lived

Throughout the countless years of God.
Selected.
++ oor oe _

God Loves You.

God loves you. There can be no doubt
about that. Christ says, ‘‘God so loved the
world, that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in Him should not
perish, but have everlasting life.”” God loved
the world. The world is a world of sinners,
and there is nothing lovely about it. Still God
loved that world. You belong to the world,
and s0 God loved you. No matter how un-
lovely you are, you are one of that world which
God loved. You may nof desire to be loved,
and yet you are one of that ‘'so loved’’ world.
You do not deserve to be loved, yet still loved
you are, in spite of all. You may never yet

have believed it, and stillit is true: God loved
the world, God loved you.

God loves you. He has given you a proof
of His love. You may have often been told
by others that they loved you, but they have
as often failed to prove it; sometimes they
rather proved the reverse. It is not so with
God. You are not left without a proof of His
love. And what a proof itis! ‘‘God so loved
the world, that He gave His only begotten
Son.’? He gave His only Son as a free gift
unasked, undesired, undeserved. He gave the
Son of His love into the manger, into a life of
poverty and want, into the most bitter suffer-
ings, into the most shameful death upon the
cross. He thus gave His Son that this Son
might bear the world’s sin, your sin, and suf-
fer all the punishment of sin. He gave His
Son as the Lamb of God that taketh away the
sin of the world. And what moved Him thus
to give HisownSon? ‘‘Godsoloved the world,
that He gave His only begotten Son.”” Amaz-
ing love! Priceless gift! Had He given you
mountains of gold andsilver, had He given
you all the treasures that lie hidden in the
bowels of the earth, or are scattered through-
out the world, all would be as nothing for His
giving His only begotten Son to suffer and to
die for you. God loved you with an amazing
love; for ‘therein is love, not that we loved
God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son
to be the propitiation for our sins,’’ 1 John4, 10.

And for what purpose did God thus show
His love? He wants you to be saved. He
wants to have you with Himself in heaven.
He does not want you to go to hell and suffer
there everlasting damnation. No.. He wants
you to get to heaven and there enjoy ever-
lasting bliss and happiness. ‘‘God so loved
the world, that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not
perish, but have everlasting life.’’ ‘‘Whoso-
ever? —mark that word whosoever, it in-
cludes you—‘‘whosoever’” —and be he the
greatest of sinners, the blackest of sinners,
the chief of sinners— “whosoever believeth
in Him should not perish.’” Not perish! Not
be lost in everlasting damnation! No! No!
‘yyhosoever believeth in Him should not per-
ish, but have everlasting life.’” Everlasting

life! Not a life of happiness for a few years
only, or a thousand years only, but ‘‘ever-
lasting life,’’ a life of everlasting joys, and
bliss, and happiness.

God loves you. He has given His only be-
gotten Son as your Redeemer and Saviour.
Will you reject His love? Will you reject the
gift of His love? If you reject it all until the
end and die without accepting the Saviour,
you will perish in hell forever. You cannot
reject that Saviour and be happy and safe.
Neither can you accept Him and be unhappy
or perish; for ‘‘whosoever believeth in Him
shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”
No matter where you are, and who you are,
and what you are, accept the gift of God’s
love, believe in Jesus your Saviour, and you
are saved for ever. Then you will love Him
who first loved you, and praise Him, and work
for Him who died for you on Calvary’s Cross,
and you will tell other poor sinners that they,
too, are loved of God. ‘‘For God so loved
the world, that whosoever believeth in Him
should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

— > +e

The Blessing of Trials.

Very many of the sweetest joys of Christian
hearts are songs which have been learned in
the bitterness of trial. It is said of a little
bird that he will never learn to sing the song
his master will have him sing while it is light
in his cage. He learns a snatch of every song
he hears, but will not learn a full, separate
melody of his own. And the master covers
the cage and makes it dark all about the bird,
and then he listens and learns the one song
that is taught to him, until his heart is full
of it. ‘Then ever after he sings that song in
the light.

With many of us it is as with the bird. The
Master has a song He wants to teach us, but
we learn only a strain of it, a note here and
there, while we catch up snatches of the world’s
songs and sing them with it. Then He comes
and makes it dark about us till we learn the
sweet melody He would teach us. Many of
the loveliest songs of peace and trust sung by
God’s children in this world, they have been
taught in the darkened chambers of sorrow.