And if Christ made sacrifices to save souls, the Christian must, in this regard, be Christ-like. Did Christ sacrifice his throne, his garments of light unapproachable, his home in the bosom of his Father, and the riches of unnumbered worlds, and for your sake become poor? What labour or what sacrifice will you regard as too much in view of saving one soul from death? What are you now doing specifically by way of rescuing souls? Is there not now a soul unsaved in your mind's eye, for whose salvation you ought justnow to make an effort? But perhaps sacrifices in time, labour, money, or feeling, may be required in order to reach that soul. Will you now make the effort, or will you delay it till a more convenient season, and let that unsaved, lost spirit meet you at the bar of God? O! unless you are wholly sure that you have already made every prayerful effort within your power to clear your skirt of his blood, hasten to do it now, or your next meeting may be at the bar of God. "Let him know that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his ways, shall save his soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins." -Zion's Herald. THE CROSS. BY REV. DR. ALEXANDER. The death of Christ on the cross may well be reckoned mysterious, for it was at the same time a cursed and a blessed death. Christ was "made a curse for us" that he might deliver us from the curse of the law. And yet Christ's death on the cross is the most blessed event which ever occurred in the world; for on the cross the price of our redemption was paid. Christ "bore our sins in his own body on the tree." He died, "the just for the unjust," to bring us unto God. This led Paul to say, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." The cross is a centre in which many lines of truth meet. The cross is an incomprehensible mystery. That God should be manifest of life should in the flesh, is the great "mystery of y of godliness." That the Prince be crucified, was an event which caused the angels to stoop from their celestial thrones, that they might gaze upon it. The prophets who predicted these events were perplexed at their own prophecies, "searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ." The truths which are exhibited in a clear and strong light by the crucifixion of Christ are such as these: 1. The infinite evil of sin, which in order to its pardon required such a sacrifice. 2. The holiness and justice of God, which would not suffer sin to pass without full evidence of the divine disapprobation, and his inflexible purpose to visit it with condign punishment. 3. The wisdom of God, in contriving a method of salvation, by which his own glory would be promoted in the eternal salvation of hell-deserving sinners; and this wisdom is chiefly manifest in the incarnation of the Son of God, by which the divine and human natures are united in one person. 4. But the most wonderful exhibition of the cross is the mercy of God, the love of God to sinners--such love as never could have been conceived of, had it not been manifested by the gift of his own Son: "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." - Am. Messenger. |