read. It is the act of One with whom all men are already
connected in the closest way. And the result of our contemplation of it
is, not that we admire, but that we are drawn, are attracted, into new
relations with Him whom that death reveals. This death moves and draws
us as no other can, because here we get to the very heart of that which
most deeply concerns us. Here we learn what our God is and where we
stand eternally. He who is nearest us of all, and in whom our life is
bound up, reveals Himself; and seeing Him here full of ungrudging and
most reliable love, of tenderest and utterly self-sacrificing
devotedness to us, we cannot but give way to this central attraction,
and with all other willing creatures be drawn into fullest intimacy and
firmest relations to the God of all.

The death of Christ, then, draws men chiefly because God here shows men
His sympathy, His love, His trustworthiness. What the sun is in the
solar system, Christ's death is in the moral world. The sun by its
physical attraction binds the several planets together and holds them
within range of its light and heat. God, the central intelligence and
original moral Being, draws to Himself and holds within reach of His
life-giving radiance all who are susceptible of moral influences; and He
does so through the death of Christ. This is His supreme revelation.
Here, if we may say so with reverence, God is seen at His best--not that
at any time or in any action He is different, but here He is _seen_ to
be the God of love He ever is. Nothing is better than self-sacrifice:
that is the highest point a moral nature can touch. And God, by the
sacrifice which is rendered visible on the cross, gives to the moral
world a real, actual, immovable centre, round which moral natures will
more and more gather, and which will hold them together in self-effacing
unity.

To complete the idea of the attractiveness of the Cross, it must further
be kept in view that this particular form of the manifestation of the
Divine love was adapted to the needs of those to whom it was made. To
sinners the love of God manifested itself in providing a sacrifice for
sin. The death on the cross was not an irrelevant display, but was an
act required for the removal of the most insuperable obstacles that lay
in man's path. The sinner, believing that in the death of Christ his
sins are atoned for, conceives hope in God and claims the Divine
compassion in his own behalf. To the penitent th