of
its disappointment, the very revelation of the Father's heart and the
very action of the Father's arm? 'Come unto me, all ye that labour,
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' That is Christ
beseeching and God beseeching in Him. Need I quote other words,
gentle, winning, loving? Do we not feel, when looking upon Christ, as
if the secret of His whole life was the stretching out imploring and
welcoming hands to men, and praying them to grasp His hands, and be
saved? But, oh, brethren! the fact that towers above all others,
which explains the whole procedure of divinity, and is the keystone
of the whole arch of revelation; the fact which reveals in one triple
beam of light, God, man, and sin in the clearest illumination, is the
Cross of Jesus Christ. And if that be not the very sublime of
entreaty; and if any voice can be conceived, human or divine, that
shall reach men's hearts with a more piercing note of pathetic
invitation than sounds from that Cross, I know not where it is.
Christ that dies, in His dying breath calls to us, and 'the blood of
sprinkling speaketh better things than that of Abel'; inasmuch as its
voice is, 'Come unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.'

Not only in the divine facts of the life and death of Jesus Christ,
but in all the appeals of that great revelation which lies before us
in Scripture; and may I say, in the poor, broken utterances of men
whose harsh, thin voices try to set themselves, in some measure, to
the sweetness and the fulness of His beseeching tones--does
God call upon you to draw close to Him, and put away your enmity. And
not only by His Word written or ministered from human lips, but also
by the patient providences of His love He calls and prays you to
come. A mother will sometimes, in foolish fondness, coax her sullen
child by injudicious kindness, or, in wise patience, will seek to
draw the little heart away from the faults that she desires not to
notice, by redoubled ingenuity of tenderness and of care. And so God
does with us. When you and I, who deserve--oh! so different
treatment--get, as we do get, daily care and providential blessings
from Him, is not that His saying to us, 'I beseech you to cherish no
alienation, enmity, indifference, but to come back and live in the
love'? When He draws near to us in these outward gifts of His mercy,
is He not doing Himself what He has bid us to do; and what He never
could have bid us to do, nor our hearts