It does no man any good to
say 'All men are mortal'; but how different it is when the blunt end of
that generalisation is shaped into a point, and I say 'I have to die!'
It penetrates then, and it sticks. It is easy to say 'All men are
sinners.' That never yet forced anybody down on his knees. But when we
shut out on either side the lateral view and look straight on, on the
narrow line of our own lives, up to the Throne where the Lawgiver sits,
and feel 'I am a sinful man,' that sends us to our prayers for pardon
and purity. And in like manner nobody was ever wholesomely terrified by
the thought of a general judgment. But when you translate it into 'I
must stand there,' the terror of the Lord persuades men.

In like manner that great truth which we all of us say we believe, that
Christ has died for the world, is utterly useless and profitless to us
until we have translated it into Paul's world, 'loved _me_ and gave
Himself for _me_.' I do not say that the essence of faith is the
conversion of the general statement into the particular application, but
I do say that there is no faith which does not realise one's personal
possession of the benefits of the death of Christ, and that until you
turn the wide word into a message for yourself alone, you have not yet
got within sight of the blessedness of the Christian life. The whole
river may flow past me, but only so much of it as I can bring into my
own garden by my own sluices, and lift in my own bucket, and put to my
own lips, is of any use to me. The death of Christ for the world is a
commonplace of superficial Christianity, which is no Christianity; the
death of Christ for myself, as if He and I were the only beings in the
universe, that is the death on which faith fastens and feeds.

And, dear brother, you have the right to exercise it. The Christ loves
each, and therefore He loves all; that is the process in the divine
mind. The converse is the process in the revelation of that mind; the
Bible says to us, Christ loves all, and therefore we have the right to
draw the inference that He loves each. You have as much right to take
every 'whosoever' of the New Testament as your very own, as if on the
page of your Bible that 'whosoever' was struck out, and your name, John,
Thomas, Mary, Elizabeth, or whatever it is, were put in there. 'He loved
_me_.' Can _you_ say that? Have you ever passed from the region of
universality, which is vague and profitless, into the region of per