by Gardiner Spring, 1845. THE CROSS THE ONLY PROPITIATION It is a truth universally received among Christians, that there is no other propitiation for sin except that offered by the Son of God on the cross. The Scriptures dwell on this truth with such frequency and force, that it cannot be considered in any other light than as one of the primary truths of the Christian revelation. They instruct us that "there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved," but the name of Christ; that "other foundation can no man lay, than what is laid, which is Jesus Christ:" and that, this propitiation rejected, "there remains no more sacrifice for sins." There can be no doubt that, in instances not a few, the lack of clear, impressive and strong views of this one truth lies at the foundation of great doctrinal and practical errors. The same high importance belongs to the priestly office of Christ, that belongs to his prophetic and regal offices. It is not more true that his Spirit is the only infallible teacher, and that no human traditions, and no decisions of men may supersede his unerring instructions—that he himself is the sole and only King in Zion, and that none may share with him the honors and prerogatives of his throne—than that he is the only propitiation—himself the altar—himself the Priest—himself the sacrifice—himself the "Author and Finisher" of the whole work. It is easy to conceive of a less atonement than this stupendous offering. It might have been the offering of some mere man, exalted above his fellows, and pure and stainless; it might have been some exalted and holy seraph; it might have been some super-angelic nature; or it might have been some family, or tribe, or province, that should have been appointed and consented to die in the place of the fallen. Any of these would have been a sacrifice infinitely inferior to that which was made by "God manifest in the flesh." Such are the greatness and glory of the second Person in the ever-blessed and adorable Godhead, that none hesitate to believe that it had been unspeakably desirable that he should have been spared the degradation of taking our nature, and the agonies of the cross, if there could have been any less sacrifice which would have satisfied justice. Had there been any other thus "mighty to save," by none would such a substitute have been hailed with greater joy, or more intense delight, than the Eternal Father himself, who appointed his own Son to this fearful service. Looking over the universe he had made, to see who, among them all, was competent thus to bring salvation to a lost race, "he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor—therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him." The Savior himself would not have sought and accepted this high trust, could it have been conducted to safe and honorable outcomes by another; nor was it except in viewing the inefficacy of all other sacrifices, that he said, "Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do your will, O God!" It would have been impious in another to have proposed himself for such a service. No other than the uncreated One had power to lay down his life and take it again; no other had any worthiness or merit beyond that which he himself owed to the law which man had violated; no other had the rank and dignity that could impart the adequate consideration and value to his sacrifice; no other could have borne the mighty burden which omnipotent Justice must have lain upon him for the expiation of human guilt. If God, in human nature, himself sunk under it, what created intelligence was adequate to the burden? The redemption of our race would have been hopeless and utterly impossible by any less sacrifice. To look for such a sacrifice only leaves the appalling question unanswered, "How can man be just with God?" Humanity and Deity, therefore, personally united in the great Immanuel, constituted the sacrifice. What can give worth to his death, render him a complete and all-sufficient Savior, effectively reconcile the claims of justice and mercy, and spread the "glory that excels" over the great work of his redemption—if not God in human nature voluntarily submitting to an ignominious and painful death, in order to satisfy the justice of his own law, and thus reveal "the grace of God which brings salvation"? This is a point too plain for argument, and is merely submitted to our inspection. Is not this a marvelous procedure? Can created minds, or the uncreated mind, conceive of a greater, or more effective propitiation? Can unsearchable wisdom furnish one more wise; infinite love one more touching; omnipotent power one more difficult to be accomplished; inflexible justice one which it is more sure to sanction; or heavenly grace one by which it can secure more or greater triumphs? What greater purposes can be accomplished by an expiatory sacrifice than are accomplished by the Creator thus attaching himself to a creature; power thus uniting itself with weakness; heaven with earth; God with man—encountering that storm of wrath which discharged itself on the cross, for the long thought of, and settled purpose—of bearing the penalty incurred by apostate man? If, then, there may not be a less propitiation for sin than that which Christ has made; and cannot be a greater—there is but this one sacrifice. Let us then consider somewhat more at length the PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE of this truth. It is a truth which enters deeply into the whole theory and practice of a pure Christianity. Religion in the world, religion in the heart, lives or dies with the one great expiation for sin. It is by this one offering that men are saved, in opposition to the notion that they are saved without any propitiation at all. This great article of the Christian faith meets with no more subtle or rigorous opposition than from the unchristian thought that this redemption is needless. The foolishness of God is wiser than the reasoning pride of men. Without the presumption of deciding what the only wise God may or may not perform, it is enough that he has taught us, that although ever willing and ready to forgive, he does so in a way that best comports with the honored claims of justice. It is impossible, with the utmost stretch of human ingenuity, to evade the force of the instructions of the Bible on this subject. With those to whom this part of our subject is applicable, the question is not whether there be one propitiation for sin, or many, but whether there be forgiveness with God as an arbitrary act of mercy, without any satisfaction to justice. If God is true, and his decisions meet a ready response in the claims of conscience, one complete and all-sufficient sacrifice there must be, else there is no foundation for human hope. Men who reject the death of Christ as the propitiation for human guilt, adopt another religion than that revealed in the gospel. They have not the religion of heaven; they love not its truths; they partake not of the spirit of its song; they have no supreme honors for its redeeming God and King. How the man can be kept from sinking into despair, who deliberately and pertinaciously disbelieves the one sacrifice of the Lamb of God, is more than God has revealed. To do this is to deny the "Lord that bought him, and bring upon himself swift destruction." The only terms of reconciliation between God and man were fulfilled on the cross. That God will be merciful to sinners in some way which has no respect to the great Mediator, is a most delusive and ruinous notion—if the God of heaven is just. The sympathies of heaven and earth may be enlisted for the transgressor of the Divine law; but if there be no propitiation for his offences, if he has not this one hope, this one name of Jesus to rest upon, he cannot be restored to the favor of an offended God. If the death of Christ as a true and proper sacrifice for sin be taken from the Bible, of all books is that book of God the most unintelligible, and the most full of perplexity. The sacred pages teach us that we have forgiveness of sins "through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus;" nor is there a descendant of fallen Adam who, in any age of the world, or in any climate has found peace to the troubled conscience, hope to the sinking heart, elsewhere. The one offering of Christ is also the only hope of men, in distinction from the many sacrifices of the pagan world. There are few expressions of the total impotence of the human mind to devise for itself a satisfactory religion more significant than those combined efforts of a darkened understanding and an erring conscience, by which men in pagan lands have endeavored to reinstate themselves in the favor of God, and restore those peaceful and happy communications with him which have been disturbed and broken off by sin. It would seem as though the soul of man had not lost all impressions of what it once was; that there still clings to it the instinctive and indestructible thought of its high origin and its ultimate destination; and that there is still to be found in it a confused, and yet in some sort an irrepressible, seeking after God. It is a wanderer, an exile; yet in seeking to find its way back to its native skies, it only plunges deeper into the dark wilderness. From the brutal savage who prostrates himself at the feet of some hideous idol, to the more cultivated nations who worship the sun—from those primitive ages which offered to the Creator the fruits of their harvest fields, to those more degraded nations whose worship consists in acts of obscenity and blood—all give evidence that rather than live and die without any religion, they choose one that is most false and absurd. The great principle of human nature, on which natural religion is founded, would seem to be conscious guilt, and the consequent fear of the Divine displeasure. Costly and cruel sacrifices ever have been, and are now, heaped upon the altars of the pagan world, and their shrines are sprinkled with the blood and stained with the gore of men. To all these unnatural, ineffectual and sinful sacrifices, the Scriptures set forth the one divinely authorized and effectual sacrifice of the great Redeemer. This one offering meets every demand that can be made upon it by the intelligence, the guilt, the fear, the misery, the instinctive cravings of man as an immortal being. These and ten thousand other sacrifices do but add guilt to guilt, agony to agony; and while they do violence to every natural feeling of the human heart, give neither inward comfort nor outward reformation. Before the cross the fables of paganism disappear; uncertainty is banished by the certainties of a true faith. The corruptions of men are reformed, their spirit is regenerated, by this one offering. Human reason finds an object here worthy of its inspection, and the more she studies it the more does she find employment for her largest intelligence; with more and still more gratified attachments does she exclaim, "Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" The heart, everywhere else sterile and empty, is here filled with the love and the fullness of God; and the wearied conscience, which elsewhere finds not a place for the sole of her foot to rest upon, here finds the ark of mercy. All other religions are the devices of men; this the device of heaven's unsearchable wisdom and love. It stands one and alone. All other religions are lost and swallowed up in the fullness of its light, the plenitude of its pardons, the power of its holiness. Truth, pardon, and holiness—the three things so essential to the happiness of man, and which natural religion, restless and disappointed, has so long sought in vain—are found in this one propitiation of the God-man Mediator, himself alone filling the mighty chasm sin has made between man and God. This one offering also supersedes the multiplied and repeated sacrifices of the Jewish ritual. The Jewish ritual was a burdensome religion. The first seven chapters of Leviticus are employed in giving a general account of the different kinds of sacrifices which God commanded to be offered; and these constituted by no means the whole of the offerings under that grievous and costly economy. Yet was it a ritual to which the Jews had been for so many centuries accustomed—one which was attended with so much outward splendor, and to which they were so strongly wedded—that it was then, and is still, worn and dilapidated as it is, the great obstacle to the introduction and prevalence of Christianity among that bigoted people. It was their great snare to apostasy after they became Christians; and it was to admonish them against this besetting danger—besetting them wherever they were scattered abroad—that important portions of the New Testament were written. The sacrifices of the Hebrew economy accomplished the design for which they were intended; but they were never intended to be real atonements for sin. There were great and obvious defects in them, that were remedied only by the high and exalted character of the great High-priest of the Christian dispensation, and the perfection and efficacy of his sacrifice. No angelic ministration could conduct the church of God to her heavenly inheritance; angels were but the servants of Christ, their true and only Lord. Nor could Moses, who was himself but a servant in God's house, compared with Christ the Son and heir. Nor could Aaron, with his long succession of priests, and costly and bloody sacrifices. They were all imperfect and sinning men, "compassed with infirmity," and, by reason thereof, ought, as for the people so also for themselves, to offer for sins. Christ was "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, who needs not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's—for this he did once, when he offered up himself." They were "many priests, because they were not allowed to continue by reason of death;" but Christ, "because he continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore he is able to save to the uttermost, those who who come unto God by him," in all places, through all times, under all dispensations. The sacrifices under the Jewish dispensation were but prefigurative of the great Christian sacrifice; the "shadow of good things to come;" the outline of the great reality; the speechless portrait of the wondrous original; the sculptured, cold, and marble statue of the living person. They did not profess to remove guilt from the conscience, nor impurity from the heart; for "then they would not have ceased to be offered, because that the worshipers once purged would have had no more conscience of sins." "In those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year." They were fitted to remind men of their ill desert, and the penalty due to their transgressions. They did no more than this; "for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins." The sacrifices of the Jewish ritual must be often repeated, while the sacrifice of Christ, offered "once for all," accomplished the great object for which it was offered. "This Man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God." His work of propitiation was completed then, "For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are sanctified." This was a most important lesson to be inculcated on the minds of the doubting and uncertain Jews. Their own prophets had predicted a sacrifice which would effect the total abolition of their own sacrifices; that would "finish the transgression—make an end of sin, make reconciliation for iniquity—and bring in everlasting righteousness;" but this people were slow of heart to believe what the prophets had written. Would that they were not still slow of heart to believe both their own prophets and their own Messiah! They are still "beloved for the Father's sake," and are yet to be gathered in; and when that day arrives, and they "come in with the fullness of the Gentiles," nothing will affect them more deeply than their scornful rejection of David's Son and Lord. They will look on him whom they have pierced, and mourn; and will see that his propitiation is the only fountain set open for sin and uncleanness. We indeed, as professed believers in the Christian faith, may suppose that this contrast between the many and repeated sacrifices of the Jewish ritual, and the one sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, has no relevancy to our character and condition. But it deserves to be engraved on our hearts, as well as theirs. It involves so many great truths and principles that are essential to Christianity, that Gentiles as well as Jews are concerned in it as one of the most satisfactory and convincing arguments for a humble and exclusive reliance on the one Mediator, and his one sacrifice. "No bleeding bird, nor bleeding beast, Nor hyssop branch, nor sprinkling priest, Nor running brook, nor flood, nor sea, Can wash the dismal stain away. "Jesus, my God, your blood alone Has power sufficient to atone; Your blood can make me white as snow, No Jewish types could cleanse me so." The sacrifice of Christ is also the one and only sacrifice, in that it rebukes all the vain efforts of a self-righteous religion. No truth in the gospel is more plainly revealed than that to every one who will accept the blessings of the gospel, they are given freely. God freely gave his Son to die; his Son freely offered up himself a sacrifice unto God for us; of his rich and free grace he offers all the blessings of his great salvation, "without money, and without price;" of grace, infinitely free, though sovereign and discriminating, the Holy Spirit gives repentance and remission of sins. It is all gift and grace from beginning to end. "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." This is the great message of the gospel. "This is the record that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." Men have nothing to do in procuring or purchasing it; nothing to do in deserving it; nothing to do in qualifying themselves to receive it. They have nothing to do and nothing to give for it. "Who has first given to the Lord, and it shall be recompensed to him again? for of him, and through him, and to him, are all things." Men are not givers, but receivers; not purchasers and claimants, but beggars. Instead of having any merit of their own, they are eternally indebted to the Divine justice, and have nothing to pay. They are "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked;" nothing relieves their poverty and wretchedness, but they are the rather perpetually accumulating and increasing it—until they are made happy in the Savior's blessedness, wealthy in his riches, wise in his wisdom, and clothed with the pure robe of his righteousness—that the shame of their nakedness does not appear. Yet is there a strong tendency in the human mind, and an almost indomitable desire in men, to put themselves upon a series of self-sufficient efforts to work their own way to heaven, "going about to establish their own righteousness," and not submitting "themselves unto the righteousness of God." The spirit of self-righteousness usually expresses itself either by performances which are believed to procure and merit the sinner's salvation, or by those efforts by which men hope to make themselves so much better as to become the fit objects of Divine mercy. The moral sinner, who hopes to receive the favor of God by his morality, while he may profess to depend on Christ alone, depends on him in words only, and not in heart. The religious formalist, who hopes to secure the Divine favor by his prayers and religious services, while he professes his dependence on Christ alone, is at heart a pharisee and rejects a free salvation. The anxious and inquiring sinner who confesses that he is unworthy, and feels that if he were not so great a sinner he might find mercy, is secretly cleaving to his own righteousness, and only in another form cherishing the error, that if he were but a better man he might have hope. Now the simple truth, clearly seen and truly felt, that there is no other sacrifice for sin except that offered by the great Mediator; that "he died unto sin once;" that he "has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God;" and that no other ground of acceptance is required, or is necessary, not only cuts up these self-righteous hopes root and branch, but shows their absurdity and wickedness. It shows their absurdity—for if salvation be "by grace, then it is no more of works—otherwise grace is no more grace;" and "if it be of works, then it is no more grace—otherwise work is no more work." It shows their wickedness—for it evinces their hostility to God's free salvation, their reluctance to be under obligation to Christ alone, and their preference to their own wretched performances over the great work of Jesus the Lord. It shows the secret pride that is in the hearts of men, in that they endeavor to work, for that which God freely bestows; to procure by their own well-doing what nothing but the blood of his Son could procure; and, like Simon, vainly think "the gift of God may be purchased with money." The language of Christ's one sacrifice is, it is not by works of righteousness which men have done, but according to his great mercy, that they are saved. Those who hope to enter into life in any other way than by Christ alone, be they ever so moral, and ever so punctual in their outward observance of religious institutions, will have a place in that same world of mourning which is prepared for the openly ungodly. There is no other way of salvation for the best sinner, than God has provided for the worst sinner. Men are always deceived in their true character, as well as in their hopes, when they look away from Christ to themselves. "I know by sad experience," says that wonderful man, George Whitefield, "what it is to be lulled asleep with a false peace. Long was I lulled asleep. Long did I think myself a Christian, when I knew nothing of the Lord Jesus Christ. I used to fast twice a-week. I used to pray sometimes nine times a day. I used to receive the sacrament constantly every Lord's day. And yet I knew nothing of Jesus Christ in my heart. I knew not I must be a new creature. I knew nothing of inward religion in my soul." This, then, is the counsel of the Mediator of the new covenant, and of that great, that solitary transaction, which veiled the heavens in mourning. "Look unto me, and be saved!" "Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest!" The one offered sacrifice of Christ is likewise a truth of great importance, as condemning the error of those who flatter themselves that there will be some method of mercy devised hereafter for the final restoration of those who die in their sins. Those who are ensnared by this fatal error adopt it on different grounds. But whatever their different theories may be, no truth in the Bible is so fatal to their delusions as the truth that it is "by one offering that God has perfected for ever those who are sanctified." There are various views of the cross that are death to the hope that in the decisions of the eternal world, no difference will be made between the righteous and the wicked; or if there be a difference at first, all will at last, and in some unknown period of the boundless future, be gathered into the Divine kingdom. But the truth we are considering is, of all others, the most absolutely withering to this vain hope, this soul-destroying delusion. The error proceeds upon a false estimate of the great work of redemption, and of the great difficulty of saving men at all. Nothing short of the most profound and unsearchable wisdom could have devised any method of redemption. When the wicked shall stand before the great Judge at the last day, they will be condemned for having rejected it. If, at any period thereafter, "God will pardon and save them, he must do it either on account of a greater or less atonement than that which Christ has made, or without any atonement at all. But it is certain that no greater atonement can be made than that which Christ has made, and therefore God cannot pardon and save them on account of an atonement greater than the atonement of Christ. There is no reason to believe that God will ever pardon and save them on account of a less atonement than the atonement of Christ, after he has condemned them to eternal destruction for rejecting that very atonement. And if he will not pardon and save them on account of a less atonement than the atonement of Christ, it cannot be supposed that he will pardon and save them without any atonement at all." These considerations would absolutely shut up every door of hope to those who finally reject the gospel, but for one most wondrous hypothesis; and that is, that the death of Christ itself may possibly be hereafter repeated, and those tremendous scenes of Bethlehem, Gethsemane, and Calvary be acted over again. This bold hypothesis presents a subject of very solemn and dreadful consideration. It must strike every mind that in originally deciding upon the death of Christ as the selected method of mercy, it was a method altogether peculiar, and above the researches of created wisdom. "If the principle of substitution," says the distinguished Robert Hall, "be at all admitted in the operation of criminal law, it is too obvious to require proof that it should be introduced very sparingly, only on very rare occasions, and never be allowed to subside into a settled course. It requires some great crisis to justify its introduction—some extraordinary combination of difficulties, obstructing the natural course of justice. It requires that while the letter of the law is dispensed with, its spirit be fully adhered to; so that instead of weakening the motives to obedience, it shall present a salutary monition, a moral and edifying spectacle. Such a method of procedure must be of rare occurrence, and to this circumstance, whenever it does occur, its utility must, in a great measure, be ascribed. The substitution of Christ in the room of a guilty race receives all the advantage as an impressive spectacle, which it is possible to derive from this circumstance. He once suffered from the foundation of the world; nor have we the least reason to suppose any similar transaction has occurred on the theater of the universe, or will ever occur again in the annals of eternity. It stands amid the lapse of ages and the waste of worlds—a single and solitary monument." In confirmation of these thoughts, we may dwell on the following instructive passages of revealed truth—"Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more; death has no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he lives he lives unto God." "Now once in the end of the world has he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment; so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto those who look for him shall he appear the second time without sin, (or a sin-offering,) unto salvation." "By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." "This Man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God." These are truths of deep and solemn import. The question is decided, that Christ dies no more. Oh, who is there that desires that he should travel that bloody path again, and a second time drink of that cup? Nor would it be of any avail to the incorrigible despisers of his salvation, if he should again bow his head and give up the spirit. They would despise him still. Their day of grace was continued long enough to test their character and ascertain their decision; nor was it cut short, nor were they consigned to their own place, until their decision was irrevocably formed to remain his enemies, and the fact was well ascertained that no further space for repentance would avail them. There is nothing in the flames of hell to subdue an obdurate and malignant heart, but everything to excite, and irritate, and confirm its rebellion. Were the blessed Savior again to disrobe and empty himself, and descend to that fearful world; not only would they crucify him afresh, but scoff at his offered mercy and trample it under their feet. No—"there remains no more sacrifice for sins!" but a "certain fearful looking for judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries!" Never will Christ die again; and never will there be any hope for those who account the blood of the covenant with which he was sanctified an unholy thing. How dreadful is the condition of the man who is beyond the reach of Christ! Prize, oh prize this great redemption while it is called today! To these thoughts we add one more. The death of Christ is the only sacrifice at once annihilating the uncommanded sacrifices still offered to God by a human priesthood. Of the many forms in which the disposition of men to magnify the importance of external ordinances over a spiritual, heart religion, expresses itself—none is more pernicious than that monstrous system which is held in the church of Rome, and which teaches that the bread and wine in the Lord's supper are really changed into the substance of Christ's body and blood, and when presented by the priest to God is offered as a true and living sacrifice, and when thus offered is effectual to procure the pardon of sin. Some portions of the Protestant episcopal church, while they may not fully believe the doctrine of transubstantiation, have fallen into the same error of regarding the Lord's supper as a proper and real sacrifice. These misguided people believe that as often as this festival is celebrated, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is virtually repeated, and solemnly offered to God, in order to accomplish their salvation. If the instructions of the New Testament may be relied on, every other priesthood is done away with and absorbed in His, who, prompted by love to the souls of men, left the bosom of his Father, and offered up himself a sacrifice to God in the room and place of guilty men. He alone is qualified for this high office; he alone is called to it of God; he alone is accepted in his great priestly character. He is ordained a priest forever, "not after the law of a carnal commandment," but after "the power of an endless life." There is no warrant for representing the Christian ministry as a priesthood; nor may any arrogate to themselves this office without encroaching on the prerogative of the great High-priest of the Christian profession, and exposing themselves to the angry rebuke which confounded and consumed the sons of Aaron, because they approached the altar unbidden, and "offered strange fire which the Lord had not commanded." The scriptural definition of a priest is, one who is "ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins." Since the abolition of the Jewish economy and the death of Christ, no living man, no being in the universe sustains this office, except the Son, who is consecrated a priest for evermore. The priests under the law had successors, because they were dying men—our great High-priest has no successor, because he himself "ever lives." And because every other priesthood is done away and absorbed in Christ's, every other sacrifice is done away and absorbed in his. The pretense of repeating it, while it is one of a system of errors of frightful enormity, is evidence of great moral blindness, if not rash and reckless impiety. God would have men feel their constant dependence on this one sacrifice, once offered. They need no other. It is by the power of this finished propitiation that they are delivered from sin and hell, and adopted as his returning children into his Divine family—"These are they," said one of the elders about the throne to John in the Revelation, "who came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." They follow the Lamb wherever he goes; and the song they sing is, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing!" Take heed, that no man beguile you from "the simplicity that is in Christ." He has procured your reconciliation to God by devoting himself to the death of the cross. Here is the strength of your faith and the vividness of your joy. Spiritual enjoyments must necessarily decline and wither whenever you lose sight of this "one offering." Resources of blessedness are here, never to be exhausted. No considerations of unworthiness or ill desert should obscure your views of this great sacrifice. That God is willing to pardon, to sanctify, to guide, to save—we know assuredly when we look at the cross. It is only the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne who shall feed you, and shall lead you to living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from your eyes! |