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That Mystery of Love!
by Augustus Toplady
If anything can awake astonishment, and inflame our
gratitude, it must be that
mystery of love- God manifested
in our nature, and made man, to bleed and die for our salvation.
That He should condescend to be sold for thirty shekels of
silver, to be apprehended and condemned as a malefactor;
to be crowned with piercing thorns; to be scourged at the
bloody pillar; to bear His cross; to be numbered with
transgressors; to be reviled by rufianly soldiers, and a merciless
populace; to be torn with tormenting nails; and pierced with a
hostile spear; and suspended on the ignominious tree, between
heaven and earth, as unworthy of either, though He was the
maker and preserver of both.
What thought can reach, what tongue can tell, the infinite riches
of His love to man, that induced Him freely to undergo all this,
only to make man happy!
Nay, He not only freely underwent it, but even
longed for the time of His crucifixion to come-
"I have a baptism of sufferings to be baptized with; and
how am I straitened till it be accomplished?" (Luke 12:50)
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