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 length of His love
can be stretched to touch you.
If we content ourselves with that altogether inadequate and lame
conception of Him and of His nature, of course there is no present bond
between any man upon earth and Him, and it is absurd to talk about His
present love as extending in any way to me. But we have to believe,
rising to the full height of the Christian conception of the nature and
person of Christ, that when He was here on earth the divine that dwelt
in Him so informed and inspired the human as that the love of His man's
heart was able to grasp the whole, and to separate the individuals who
should make up the race till the end of time; so as that you and I,
looking back over all the centuries, and asking ourselves what is the
length of the love of Christ, can say, 'It stretches over all the years,
and it reached then, as it reaches now, to touch me, upon whom the ends
of the earth have come.' Its length is conterminous with the duration of
humanity here or yonder.
That thought of eternal being, when we refer it to God, towers above us
and repels us; and when we turn it to ourselves and think of our own
life as unending, there come a strangeness and an awe that is almost
shrinking, over the thoughtful spirit. But when we transmute it into the
thought of a love whose length is unending, then over all the shoreless,
misty, melancholy sea of eternity, there gleams a light, and every
wavelet flashes up into glory. It is a dreadful thing to think, 'For
ever, Thou art God.' It is a solemn thing to think, 'For ever I am to
be'; but it is life to say: 'O Christ! Thy love endureth from
everlasting to everlasting; and because it lives, I shall live
also'--'Oh! give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy
endureth for ever.'
There is another measure of the length of the love of Christ. 'Master!
How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?--I say not
unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven.' So said the
Christ, multiplying perfection into itself twice--two sevens and a
ten--in order to express the idea of boundlessness. And the law that He
laid down for His servant is the law that binds Himself. What is the
length of the love of Christ? Here is one measure of it--howsoever long
drawn out my sin may be, this is longer; and the white line of His love
runs out into infinity, far beyond the point where the black line of my
sin stops. Anything short of eternal patience would have been long ago
exhausted by your sins and mine, and our brethren's. But the pitying
Christ, the eternal Lover of all wandering souls, looks down from heaven
upon every one of us; goes with us in all our wanderings, bears with us
in all our sins, in all our transgressions still is gracious. His
pleadings sound on, like some stop in an organ continuously persistent
through all the other notes. And round His throne are written the divine
words which have been spoken about our human love modelled after His:
'Charity suffereth long and is kind; is not easily provoked, is not soon
angry, beareth all things.' The length of the love of Christ is the
length of eternity, and outmeasures all human sin.