Enough, my muse, of earthly things, And inspirations but of wind ; Take up thy lute, and to it bind Loud and everlasting strings. And on them play, and to them sing. The happy mournful stories, The lamentable glories Of the great crucified King! Mountainous heap of wonders ! which dost rise Till earth thou joinest with the skies! Too large at bottom, and at top too high. To be half seen by mortal eye; How shall I grasp this boundless thing? What shall I play? What shall I sing?
ROMANS VIII. 32 III
I'll sing the mighty riddle of mysterious love, Which neither wretched man below, nor blessed spirits above
With all their comments can explain, How all the whole world's life to die did not disdain! I'll sing the searchless depths of the compassion divine, The depths unfathomed yet
By reason's plummet, and the line of wit;
Too light the plummet, and too short the line;
How the eternal Father did bestow His own eternal Son as ransom for His foe ;
I'll sing aloud that all the world may hear
The triumph of the buried Conqueror;
How hell was by its prisoner captive led, And the great slayer, Death, slain by the dead.
Methinks I hear of murdered men the voice Mixed with the murderers' confused noise,
Sound from the top of Calvary; My greedy eyes fly up the hill, and see Who 'tis hangs there, the midmost of the three;
O ! how unlike the others He ; Look ! how He bends His gentle head with blessings from the tree, His gracious hands, ne'er stretched but to do good, Are nailed to the infamous wood ! And sinful man does fondly bind The arms which He extends to embrace all human kind.^
4. " For us all." — He delivered Him up for us all. There was a national election of the Jew in which the Gentile had no part ; but the drift of the Apostle's argument is that the highest blessing and the fulness of that blessing are for Jew and Gentile alike. The Gospel is catholic ; it knows nothing of national predestination and privilege. If God gave His Son for us all, He will not dis- tribute unequally the blessings which flow from that unspeakable gift. Whatever were the national and temporal blessings of the Jew, the Greek and barbarian shall equally share with him in the sovereign gifts of grace. And so the gifts of grace are not given unequally among the various classes of society. " The same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him." It is for the Christian Church to do its utmost to put all nations in possession of their spiritual inheritance.
^ Abraham Cowley,
112 THE INCLUSIVE GIFT
Soul, which to hell wast thrall,
He, He for thine offence Did suffer death, who could not die at all.
0 sovereign excellence ! 0 life of all that lives! Eternal bounty, which all goodness gives !
How could Death mount so high ? Ko wit this point can reach; Faith only doth us teach,
For us He died, at all who could not die.^
II.
With Him all Things.
"How shall he not also with him freely give us all things?"
After the gift of Jesus Christ, every other gif i; is comparatively a small matter. Abraham did not spare his son Isaac, but de- livered him up to God, In his mind, in his heart, he surrendered him as truly as if he had slain him and burned him on the altar. And after that proof of love to God, do you suppose Abraham possessed anything that he would have been unwilling to give ? If God had asked his flocks and his herds, his silver and his gold, we may well suppose that Abraham would have given all without a murmur. And God having given us Christ, we cannot imagine Him unwilling to bestow any favour that would really be a favour.
He will give all things for these reasons —
(1) The greater gift implies the less. We do not expect that a man who hands over a million pounds to another, to help him, will stick at a farthing afterwards. If you give a diamond you may well give a box to keep it in. In God's gift the lesser will follow the lead of the greater ; and whatsoever a man can want, it is a smaller thing for Him to bestow, than was the gift of His Son.
^ Southey told an anecdote of Sir Massey Lopes, which is a good story of a miser. A man came to him and told him he was in great distress, and £200 would save him. He gave him a draft for the money. " Now," says he, '* what will you do with this ? " " Go to the bankers and get it cashed." " Stop," said he,
^ William Drummond.
ROMANS VIII. 32 113
" I will cash it." So he gave him the money, but first calculated and deducted the discount.^
^ There is a beautiful contrast between the manners of giving the two sets of gifts implied in the words of the original, perhaps scarcely capable of being reproduced in any translation. The expression that is rendered, " freely give," implies that there is a grace and a pleasantness in the act of bestowal. God gave in Christ what we may reverently say it was something like pain to give. Will He not give the lesser gifts, whatever they may be, which it is the joy of His heart to communicate ? The greater implies the less.^