ove takes in its
dealings with me. We may force Him to do 'His work,' 'His strange
work,' as Isaiah calls it, and to punish when He would fain only
succour and comfort and bless. Just as a fog in the sky does not
touch the sun, but turns it to our eyes into a fiery ball, red and
lurid, so the mist of my sin coming between me and God, may, to my
apprehension and to my capacity of reception, solemnly make different
that great love of His. But yet there is no difference in the fact of
God's love to us.

III. Thirdly, there is no difference in the purpose and power of
Christ's Cross for us all.

'He died for all.' The area over which the purpose and the power of
Christ's death extend is precisely conterminous with the area over
which the power of sin extends. It cannot be--blessed be God!--that
the raven Sin shall fly further than the dove with the olive branch
in its mouth. It cannot be that the disease shall go wider than the
cure. And so, dear friends, I have to come to you now with this
message. No matter what a man is, how far he has gone, how sinful he
has been, how long he has stayed away from the sweetness and grace of
that great sacrifice on the Cross, that death was for him. The power
of Christ's sacrifice makes possible the forgiveness of all the sins
of all the world, past, present, and to come. The worth of that
sacrifice, which was made by the willing surrender of the Incarnate
Son of God to the death of the Cross, is sufficient for the ransom
price of all the sins of all men.

Nor is it only the power of the Cross which is all embracing, but its
purpose also. In the very hour of Christ's death, there stood, clear
and distinct, before His divine omniscience, each man, woman, and
child of the race. And for them all, grasping them all in the
tenderness of His sympathy and in the clearness of His knowledge, in
the design of His sufferings for them all, He died, so that every
human being may lay his hand on the head of the sacrifice, and _know_
'his guilt was there,' and may say, with as triumphant and
appropriating faith as Paul did, 'He loved _me_,' and in that hour of
agony and love 'gave Himself for _me_.'

To go back to a metaphor already employed, the prisoners are gathered
together in the prison, not that they may be slain, but 'God hath
included them all,' shut them all up, 'that He might have mercy upon
all.' And so, as it was in the days of Christ's life upon earth, so
is it now, and so will it be