The love of Jesus for His Church has ever been excessive in intensity. His blood was shed for her redemption. Love laid Him on the altar, where His life was consumed for her sake. It laid all Covenant blessings at her feet, placed the angelic hosts at her service, made the universe tributary to her welfare, opened heaven for her admission, prepared her throne at the right hand of God, and gave the eternal ages to her for service and enjoyment, in Jesus Christ her Lord. And this love has never abated; His voice resounds across the centuries, falling upon her ears in sweetest accents, saying, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." The Lord Jesus asks the Church for reciprocal love. It is His due; Christ is worthy; nothing less than vehement love will satisfy the Divine heart. The apostle, in dread of its subsidence, cries out, "Keep yourselves in the love of God." How readily the Church, in interest and zeal, becomes cold. Her spiritual pulse sinks till it is scarcely perceptible; the flames disappear, and the coals lie hidden in their own grey ashes. With such conditions the Lord is vexed. He gently chides His inconstant Bride, saying, "Thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen; repent, and do the first works." Then in unwaning faithfulness He tenderly soliloquizes: "Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her; and she shall sing as in the days of her youth." The Covenanted Church was now in the wilderness; the Lord had brought her hither, that He might woo her back to Himself, and revive her first love. Here He spake to her heart the words that rekindled the fires of her earliest and strongest devotion to the Covenant, that holy contract of her marriage to the Lord. The loving fidelity of the 40,000 Covenanters, or more, who had been deprived of their ministers by King Charles, was severely tested. The Lord Jesus, in His crucial providence, was to them as a refiner's fire; their love was sorely tried in the terrible heat.