sts have represented it--viz. that the sacrifice of
Jesus Christ changed in any manner the divine heart and disposition. It
is not as unfriendly critics (who, perhaps, are not to be so much blamed
for their unfriendliness as for their superficiality) would have us to
believe, that the doctrine of Atonement says that God loves because
Christ died. But the Apostle who preached that doctrine and looked upon
it as the very heart and centre of his message to the world here puts as
the true sequence--Christ died because God loves. Jesus Christ said the
same thing, 'God so loved the world that He sent His Son, that whosoever
believeth on Him should be saved.'

And that brings me to the second of the remarks which I wish briefly to
make--viz. this, that the Divine Love, great, patient, wonderful,
unrepelled by men's sin, as it is, has to adopt a process to reach its
end. God by His love does not, because He cannot, raise these dead souls
into a life of righteousness without Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ
comes to be the channel and the medium through which the love of God may
attain its end. God's pitying love, because 'He is rich in mercy,' is
not turned away by man's sin; and God's pitying love, because 'He is
rich in mercy,' quickens men not by a bare will, but by the mission and
work of His dear Son.

III. And so that is the last thing on which I speak a word--viz. the
resurrection of the dead souls.

They died of sin. That was the disease that killed them. They cannot be
quickened unless the disease be conquered. Dear brethren, I have to
preach--not to argue, but to preach--and to press upon each soul the
individual acceptance of the Death of Jesus Christ as being for each of
us, if we will trust Him, the death of our death, and the death of our
sin. By His great sacrifice and sufficient oblation He has borne the
sins of the world and has taken away their guilt. And in Him the inmost
reality of the spiritual death, and its outermost parable of corporeal
dissolution, are equally and simultaneously overcome. If you will take
Him for your Lord you will rise from the death of guilt, condemnation,
selfishness, and sin into a new life of liberty, sonship, consecration,
and righteousness, and will never see death.

And, on the other hand, the life of Jesus Christ is available for all of
us. If we will put our trust in Him, His life will pass into our
deadness; He Himself will vitalise our being, dormant capacities will
be qui