But our Lord used no such qualifying clause. He is addressing one who, from his earliest days, had been trained and accustomed to take a very limited view indeed of the favor and goodness of God. Nicodemus had been taught to consider that the rich tide of Jehovah's goodness, loving-kindness, and tender mercy could only flow within the narrow inclosure of the Jewish system and the Jewish nation. The thought of its rolling forth to the wide wide world had never, we may safely assert, penetrated the mind of one trained amid the contracting influences of the legal system. Hence, therefore, it must have sounded passing strange in his ear, to hear "a teacher come from God" giving utterance to the great fact that God loved not merely the Jewish nation, nor yet some special portion of the human race, but "the world." No doubt, such a statement would add not a little to the amazement felt by this master in Israel at being told that he himself, with all His religious advantages, needed to be born again in order to see or enter the kingdom of God. Do we then deny or call in question the grand truth of predestination, election, or effectual calling? God forbid. We hold these things as amongst the fundamental principles of true Christianity. We believe in the eternal counsels and purposes of our God--His unsearchable decrees--His electing love--His sovereign mercy. But do any or all of these things interfere, in the smallest degree, with the gracious activities of the divine nature, or the outgoings of God's love towards a lost world? In no wise. God is love. That is His blessed nature, and this nature must express itself toward all. The mistake lies in supposing that because God has His purposes, His counsels, His decrees--because He is sovereign in His grace and mercy--because He has chosen from all eternity a people for His own praise and glory--because the names of the redeemed, all the redeemed, were written down in the book of the slain Lamb, before the foundation of the world--that therefore God cannot be said to love all mankind--to love the world--and, moreover that the glad tidings of God's full and free salvation ought not to be proclaimed in the ears of every creature under heaven. The simple fact is that the two lines, though so perfectly distinct, are laid down with equal clearness, in the word of God; neither interferes, in the smallest degree, with the other, but both together go to make up the beauteous harmony of divine truth and to set forth the glorious unity of the divine nature.