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Music For the Soul
Devotional: December 2nd

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TO THE UTTERMOST

In His love and in His pity He redeemed them. - Isaiah 63:9

The love of Christ is a love which has special tenderness towards its own. "Having loved His own, He loved them to the uttermost." These poor men who, with all their errors, did cleave to Him; who, in some dim way, understood somewhat of His greatness and His sweetness - and do you and I do more? - who, with all their sins, yet were true to Him in the main; who had surrendered very much to follow Him, and had identified themselves with Him - were they to have no special place in His heart because in that heart the whole world lay? Is there any reason why we should be afraid of saying that the universal love of Jesus Christ, which gathers into His bosom all mankind, does fall with special tenderness and sweetness upon those who have made Him theirs and have surrendered themselves to be His? Surely it must be that He has special nearness to those that love Him; surely it is reasonable that He should have special delight in those who try to remember Him; surely it is only what one might expect of Him that He should in a special manner honour the drafts, so to speak, of those that have confidence in Him, and have pinned their whole lives upon Him! Surely, because the sun shines down upon dunghills and all impurities, that is no reason why it should not lie with special brightness on the polished mirror that reflects its lustre! Surely, because Jesus Christ loves - blessed be His Name! - the publicans and the harlots, and the outcasts and the sinners, that is no reason why He should not bend with special tenderness over those who, loving Him, try to serve Him, and have set their whole hopes upon Him. The rainbow strides across the sky, but there is a rainbow in every little dewdrop that hangs glistening on the blades of grass. And there is nothing limited, nothing sectional, nothing narrow in the proclamation of a special tenderness of Christ towards His own, when you accompany with that truth this other, that all men are besought by Him to come into that circle of "His own," and that only they themselves shut any men out therefrom. Blessed be His Name! the whole world dwells in His love. But there is an inner chamber in which He discovers all His heart to those who find in that heart their Heaven and their all. "He came to His own," in the wider sense of the word, and "His own received Him not"; but also, "having loved His own. He loved them unto the end." There are textures and lines which can only absorb some of the rays of light in the spectrum; some that are only capable of taking, so to speak, the violet rays of judgment and of wrath, and some who open their hearts for the ruddy brightness at the other end of the line. Do you see to it, brother, that you be of that inner circle who receive the whole Christ into their hearts, and to whom He can unfold the fulness of His love.

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