Excerpt from Robertson's Living Thoughts: A Thesaurus

Love demands a sacrifice, and only by sacrifice can it reconcile itself to self. Then it is that the sacrifice of Christ replies to this, answers it, satisfies it, and makes it plain. The sacrifice Of Christ was suffering in love - it was surrender to the will of God. The Apostle Paul felt this when that Spirit was with him he was reconciled to himself.

There are two ways in which you may contemplate that sacrifice. Seen from the world's point of view, it is unjust, gross, cruel. Seen as John saw it, and as God looks at it, it was the sublimest of all truths; one which so entwines itself with our religious consciousness that you might as soon tear from us our very being as our convictions of the reality of Christ's atonement.

Now observe this world of God's. The mountain-rock must have its Surface rusted into putrescence and become dead soil before the herb can grow. The destruction of the mineral is the life of the vegetable. Again the same process begins. The corn of wheat dies, and out Of death more abundant life is born. Out of the soil in which deciduous leaves are buried the young tree shoots vigorously, and strikes its roots deep down into the realm of decay and death. Upon the life of the vegetable world the myriad forms of higher life sustain themselves - still the same law: the sacrifice of life to give life. Further still: have we never pondered over that mystery of nature, the dove struck down by the hawk, the deer trembling beneath the stroke of the lion, the winged fish falling into the jaws of the dolphin? It is the solemn law of vicarious sacrifice again. And as often as man sees his table covered with the flesh of animals slain does he behold, whether he think of it or not, the deep mystery and law of being. They have sur rendered their innocent lives that he may live.

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