el the beauty which I cannot realize:--robe me in
Thine unutterable purity:--

"Rock of ages cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee."

II. The influence of that Sacrifice on man is the introduction of the
principle of self-sacrifice into his nature,--"then were all dead."
Observe again, not He died that we might not die, but that in His
death we might be dead, and that in His sacrifice we might become each
a sacrifice to God. Moreover, this death is identical with life. They
who in the first sentence, are called dead, are in the second
denominated "they who live." So in another place, "I am crucified with
Christ, nevertheless I live;" death, therefore--that is the sacrifice
of self--is equivalent to life. Now, this rests upon a profound truth.
The death of Christ was a representation of the life of God. To me
this is the profoundest of all truths, that the whole of the life of
God is the sacrifice of self. God is Love; love is sacrifice--to give
rather than to receive--the blessedness of self-giving. If the life of
God were not such it would be a falsehood, to say that God is Love;
for even in our human nature, that which seeks to enjoy all instead of
giving all, is known by a very different name from that of love. All
the life of God is a flow of this divine self-giving charity. Creation
itself is sacrifice--the self-impartation of the divine Being.
Redemption too, is sacrifice, else it could not be love; for which
reason we will not surrender one iota of the truth that the death of
Christ was the sacrifice of God--the manifestation once in time of
that which is the eternal law of His life.

If man therefore, is to rise into the life of God, he must be absorbed
into the spirit of that sacrifice--he must die with Christ if he would
enter into his proper life. For sin is the withdrawing into self and
egotism, out of the vivifying life of God, which alone is our true
life. The moment the man sins he dies. Know we not how awfully true
that sentence is, "Sin revived, and I died?" The vivid life of sin is
the death of the man. Have we never felt that our true existence has
absolutely in that moment disappeared, and that _we_ are not?

I say therefore, that real human life is a perpetual completion and
repetition of the sacrifice of Christ--"all are dead;" the explanation
of which follows, "to live not to themselves, but to Him who died for
them and rose again." This is the tr