Shall we say this, the very words whereof confute themselves and shock alike our reason and our conscience?  Or shall we say with St John and with St Paul, that if men can be so good, God must be infinitely better; that if man can love so much, God must love more; if man, by shaking off the selfishness which is his bane, can do such deeds, then God, in whom is no selfishness at all, may at least have done a deed as far above theirs as the heavens are above the earth?  Shall we not confess that man’s self-sacrifice is but a poor and dim reflection of the self-sacrifice of God, and say with St John, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins;” and with St Paul, “Scarcely for a righteous man would one die, but God commendeth His love to us in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”?  Shall we not say this:  and find, as thousands have found ere now, in the Cross of Calvary the perfect satisfaction of our highest moral instincts, the realization in act and fact of the highest idea which we can form of perfect condescension, namely, self-sacrifice exercised by a Being of whom perfect condescension, love and self-sacrifice were not required by aught in heaven or earth, save by the necessity of His own perfect and inconceivable goodness?

We reverence, and rightly, the majesty of God.  How can that infinite majesty be proved more perfectly than by condescension equally infinite?  We adore, and justly, the serenity of God, who has neither parts nor passions.  How can that serenity be proved more perfectly, than by passing, still serene, through all the storm and crowd of circumstance which disturb the weak serenity of man; by passing through poverty, helplessness, temptation, desertion, shame, torture, death; and passing through them all victorious and magnificent; with a moral calm as undisturbed, a moral purity as unspotted, as it had been from all eternity, as it will be to all eternity, in that abysmal source of being, which we call the Bosom of the Father?  It is the moral majesty of God, as shewn on Calvary, which I uphold.  Shew that Calvary was not inconsistent with that; shew that Calvary was not inconsistent with the goodness of God, but rather the perfection of that goodness shewn forth in time and space:  then all other arguments connected with God’s majesty may go for nought, provided that God’s moral majesty be safe.  Provided God be proved to be morally infinite—­that is, in plain English, infinitely good; provided God be proved to be morally absolute—­that is, absolutely unable to have His goodness affected by any circumstance outside Him, even by the death upon the Cross:  then let the rest go.  All words about absoluteness and infinity and majesty, beyond that, are physical—­metaphors drawn from matter, which have nothing to do with God who is a Spirit.