So mighty — yet so loving!
(John MacDuff, "Ripples in the Twilight" 1885)
What a wonderful Savior! So mighty — yet so loving!
Spurning, indeed, all baseness and vileness, all mere lip-homage and hypocrisy.
Upsetting all false human ideals and empty philosophies.
At war with conventional empty religious rituals.
Denouncing every white-washed sepulcher that serves only to screen spiritual rottenness.
But welcoming . . .
many of those who were looked at askance by their fellows;
some who were the subjects of social ostracism;
those deemed fit only to be trampled, as bruised battered flowers, underneath the feet;
the repentant harlot and sinner, the prodigal, the outcast, the lost.
His heart is a very hive of tenderness . . .
washing His disciples' feet in token of humility;
standing by the grave of buried affection;
wiping away the tear of bereavement;
calming the paroxysms of untold sorrow;
arrested by the penitential sighings of the contrite spirit.
In a word, imparting . . .
rest to the weary and heavy-laden,
hope to the desponding,
sympathy to the mourner,
healing to the brokenhearted; and
finally showing, in the scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary which crowned that Incarnation of suffering love — what He the Divine Man could do and dare for perishing sinners.
The kindness of the kindest on earth has a limit — His had none.
Human affection and love may come and go — but His flows on forever!
"Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you!" Jeremiah 31:3