est hesitation in taking that great benediction of Christ's
love and spreading it over them all. That love is independent of time
and of space; it includes humanity, and is co-extensive with it.
Unturned away by unworthiness, unrepelled by non-responsiveness,
undisgusted by any sin, unwearied by any, however numerous, foiling
of its attempts, the love of Christ, like the great heavens that bend
above us, wraps us all in its sweetness, and showers upon us all its
light and its dew.

And yet, brethren, I would have you remember that whilst we thus try
to paint, in poor, poor words, the universality of that love, we have
to remember that it does not partake of the weakness that infects all
human affections, which are only strong when they are narrow, and as
the river expands it becomes shallow, and loses the force in its flow
which it had when it was gathered between straiter banks, so as that
a universal charity is almost akin to a universal indifference. But
this love that grasps us all, this river that 'proceedeth from the
Throne of God and of the Lamb,' flows in its widest reaches as deep
and as impetuous in its career as if it were held within the
narrowest of gorges. For Christ's universal love is universal only
because it is individualising and particular. We love our nation by
generalising and losing sight of the individuals. Christ loves the
world because He loves every man and woman in it, and His grace
enwraps all because His grace hovers over each.

'The sun whose beams most glorious are
Despiseth no beholder,'

but the rays come straight to each eyeball. Be sure of this: that He
who, when the multitude thronged Him and pressed Him, felt the
tremulous, timid, scarcely perceptible touch of one woman's wasted
finger on the hem of His garment, holds each of us in the grasp of
His love, which is universal, because it applies to each. You and I
have each the whole radiance of it pouring down on our heads, and
none intercepts the beams from any other. So, brethren, let us each
feel not only the love that grasps the world, but the love that
empties itself on me.

But there is one more remark that I wish to make in reference to this
constraining love of Jesus Christ, and that is, that in order to see
and feel it we must take the point of view that this Apostle takes in
my text. For hearken how he goes on. 'The love of Christ constraineth
us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then all died,
an