2dly. The mutual love of God and the saints agrees in this, — that the way of communicating the issues and fruits of these loves is only in Christ. The Father communicates no issue of his love unto us but through Christ; and we make no return of love unto him but through Christ. He is the treasury wherein the Father disposeth all the riches of his grace, taken from the bottomless mine of his eternal love; and he is the priest into whose hand we put all the offerings that we return unto the Father. Thence he is first, and by way of eminency, said to love the Son; not only as his eternal Son, — as he was the delight of his soul before the foundation of the world, Prov. viii. 30, — but also as our mediator, and the means of conveying his love to us, Matt. iii. 17; John iii. 35, v. 20, x. 17, xv. 9, xvii. 24. And we are said through him to believe in and to have access to God.