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HERALDS OF GOD put Christ there are rampant in the world to-day; that it was no monstrous eruption of iniquity that perpetrated the deed of Calvary, but familiar, common things like pride and cowardice and apathy and self-seeking which make their dwelling in the hearts of all; and that these things, rooted in our own lives, working themselves out eventually on the scale of society and gathering themselves up into the collective evil of the world, still crucify the Lord of glory. "Why persecutest thou Me?"

Moreover, you will hold up the Cross as a revelation, not only of the hatefulness of sin, but also of the divine judgment upon it. For on the day when Christ died at its hands, rather than submit or come to terms, He showed once for all what God's mind is about sin to all eternity. Here the divine uncompromising antagonism was irrevocably proclaimed. No way of dealing with sin which blurred the moral issue could be tolerated; for otherwise the chaos on the earth, so far from being removed, would have been intensified, and there would now have been added to it chaos in heaven as well. Before sin could be overcome, it must be judged. And Christ, by resisting it unto blood, has pronounced its utter condemnation. God has judged it for ever.

But greatest of all the paradoxes you will have to preach is this—that the same event which unveils evil in its terrifying, demonic malignity reveals also invincible love. That God should have taken the most awful triumph of naked, unmitigated iniquity, and 82