one and a part to that
one, and share the treasure of our affections amongst a multitude. All
this gift belongs to every one, just as all the sunshine comes to every
eye, and as every beholder sees the moon's path across the dark waters,
stretching from the place where He stands to the centre of light.

This broad love, universal as humanity, and deep as it is broad, is
universal because it is individual. You and I have to generalise, as we
say, when we try to extend our affections beyond the limits of
household and family and personal friends, and the generalising is a
sign of weakness and limitation. Nobody can love an abstraction, but
God's love and Christ's love do not proceed in that fashion. He
individualises, loving each and therefore loving all. It is because
every man has a space in His heart singly and separately and
conspicuously, that all men have a place there. So our task is to
individualise this broad, universal love, and to say, in the simplicity
of a glad faith, 'He loved me and gave Himself for me.' The breadth is
world-wide, and the whole breadth is condensed into, if I may so say, a
shaft of light which may find its way through the narrowest chink of a
single soul. There are two ways of arguing about the love of Christ,
both of them valid, and both of them needing to be employed by us. We
have a right to say, 'He loves all, therefore He loves me.' And we have
a right to say, 'He loves me, therefore He loves all.' For surely the
love that has stooped to me can never pass by any human soul.

What is the breadth of the love of Christ? It is broad as mankind, it is
narrow as myself.

II. Then, in the next place, what is the length of the love of Christ?

If we are to think of Him only as a man, however exalted and however
perfect, you and I have nothing in the world to do with His love. When
He was here on earth it may have been sent down through the ages in some
vague way, as the shadowy ghost of love may rise in the heart of a great
statesman or philanthropist for generations yet unborn, which He dimly
sees will be affected by His sacrifice and service. But we do not call
that love. Such a poor, pale, shadowy thing has no right to the warm
throbbing name; has no right to demand from us any answering thrill of
affection. Unless you think of Jesus Christ as something more and other
than the purest and the loftiest benevolence that ever dwelt in human
form, I know of no intelligible sense in which the