I read of a servant of the Lord who was invited to go and see a garden of roses. The garden was an extensive one, covering broad acres. There was nothing but roses: roses of every fragrance, roses of every color. When he was leaving the garden the owner presented him with a little phial, a bottle containing what he called "attar of roses." (Attar is a perfume obtained from petals of roses.)

As far as fragrance was concerned, that little bottle contained the garden in miniature, and in its tiny globe he had the sweetness of all those broad acres. Now, the apostle John who leaned on the bosom of Christ, who knew Him better than any of the disciples, gives us the attar of roses. He takes all the words of the Lord Jesus Christ; he presses them; he distills them, and gives us in one simple sentence the essence, the quintessence, of them all: "God is love" (1 John 4:8,16).

—Dr. Crawford Johnson