It is a first principle of faith that God is the seeker; that there is heart in Him. We are not bid to batter at closed doors. We have not to soften Him to pity, or turn Him toward us. We feel our hardness toward Him, and we think Him hard. We listen to our consciences that accuse us, and we think we hear His voice in them, who yet "upbraideth not." What a revelation of God is this, when Christ, down here among men, becomes His true and only representative!
Conscience can never take the place of revelation. God only can tell me what He is, or what Christ did for me, or how my soul can be at peace with Him. For all this I must listen to the Word alone. It alone can bring in the true eternal light in which conscience and heart alike can find their rest and satisfaction forever.
It is a blessed thing to be able to give a free and general offer of salvation―to say, "Christ died for all: come to Him, and He will give you rest." Yet there are those who need even a closer individualization.
Those who lie wounded by the roadside, needing, not merely the call of the gospel, but the grasp of the strong, tender hands, and the binding up of the gaping wounds.
There are those to whom, if they cannot appropriate Him, Christ would appropriate Himself―those who dare not thrust out leprous hands to Him because of their pollution, and who can only be liberated and brought out of their isolation by that direct touch of His, in which a new, undreamed-of life for them begins.
"He goeth after that which is lost." How much do those quiet words involve!
"But none of the ransomed ever knew How deep were the waters crossed, Nor how dark was the night which the Lord passed through, Ere He found His sheep which was lost.”
The cross was the only place where He could overtake these wanderers. It is only as we realize what the cross is that we find the arms of this mighty love thrown round us. Here indeed He has come where we are. Here is the place in which, without rebuke, we can claim Him―our place, the place of our doom― our substitute and sin-bearer He who takes it.
The awful cloud which has shadowed His glory has destroyed forever the distance between us. The crucified One is ours; for the death and judgment He has borne are ours. These are our due our penalty; and we have them in the cross borne, and borne away from us. He has found the lost; and immediately we are freed and up borne by the might of this redemption and by the living power of the Redeemer: "He layette it on His shoulders, rejoicing.”