the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
A LOVE THAT SHRINKS FROM NO SACRIFICE
He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things? - Romans 8:32
I CANNOT venture to use words of my own about such a subject, but I read in this very Epistle (Romans) of a wonderful comparison, which to me is most beautiful and most instructive, and wakens thoughts that are perhaps too blessed and too mystic to be put into words, when I read, " He that spared not His own Son, but freely delivered Him up to the death for us all "; and recognize there an allusive reference to that old story, surely the most pathetic in the pages of the Old Testament history, of the father and son going up the mountain side together to the mysterious sacrifice, and of the sorrow that passed over the heart of Abraham when he had to give up Isaac at the command of the Divine voice. Some shadow of what men call " giving up " and " loss " may be conceived to have passed across the mirror of the Divine experience when Christ died. I know not; I dare not speak about such things, but I do say that Christ’s Cross preaches to you and me of a love on the part of our Father God which shrinks from no sacrifices. " He so loved the world that He gave up His only begotten Son." That Cross proves to you and presses upon you a love which wants nothing but your love; which hungers, if I may so say, for the return of your love and of your thankfulness. A great poet of our own generation has described, with an allowable boldness, God as sitting amidst His angels, praising Him as with voice of many thunders, and of harpers with their harps, and saying about one poor man’s voice that had for awhile become silent, " I miss my little human praise." It is true. He wants your love. " The Father seeketh," said Christ- how strange and beautiful!- " the Father seeketh such to worship Him." "My son, give Me thine heart," is the inmost meaning of Christ’s Cross. Yield your love to Him, and then your Father will say as you come back, " It was meet that we should be glad, for this My son was dead, and is alive again."
'Music For The Soul' daily readings for a year from the writings of the Rev. Alexander Maclaren, D.D., selected and arranged by the Rev. Geo. Coates, published by A.C. Armstrong and Son, 51 East Tenth Street, (1897). The original text is in the Public Domain and this electronic version is free for anyone without cost or obligation. This a year long daily devotional was written by the Rev. Alexander Maclaren over 100 years ago. This Scottish pastor had a heart to follow Jesus and a love for souls.
