ding, pardoning, self-bestowing mercy may fall upon
all hearts, and gladden every soul.

So there seems to emerge, and there is, a very real and a very
significant contrast. 'I come and smite the earth with a curse' sounds
strangely unlike 'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.'
And, of course, in this generation there is a strong tendency to dwell
upon that contrast and to exaggerate it, and to assert that the more
recent has antiquated the more ancient, and that now the day when we
have to think of and to dread the curse that smites the earth is past,
'because the true Light now shineth.'

So I ask you to notice that beneath this apparent contrast there is a
real harmony, and that these two utterances, though they seem to be so
diverse, are quite consistent at bottom, and must both be taken into
account if we would grasp the whole truth. For, as a matter of fact,
nowhere are there more tender utterances and sweeter revelations of a
divine mercy than in that ancient law with its attendant prophets. And
as a matter of fact, nowhere, through all the thunderings and lightnings
of Sinai, are there such solemn words of retribution as dropped from the
lips of the Incarnate Love. There is nothing anywhere so dreadful as
Christ's own words about what comes, and must come, to sinful men. Is
there any depth of darkness in the Old Testament teaching of retribution
half as deep, half as black, and as terrible, as the gulf that Christ
opens at your feet and mine? Is there anything so awful as the
threatenings of Infinite Love?

And the same blending of the widest proclamation of, and the most
perfect rejoicing confidence in, the universal and all-forgiving love of
God, with the teaching of the sharpest retribution, lies in the writings
of this very Apostle about whose words I am speaking. There are nowhere
in Scripture more solemn pictures than those in that book of the
Apocalypse, of the inevitable consequences of departure from the love
and the faith of God, and John, the Apostle of love, is the preacher of
judgment as none of the other writers of the New Testament are.

Such is the fact, and there is a necessity for it. There must be this
blending; for if you take away from your conception of God the absolute
holiness which hates sin, and the rigid righteousness which apportions
to all evil its bitter fruits, you have left a maimed God that has not
power to love but is nothing but weak, good-natured indulgence.