We shall only understand the ground of the revealing and of the hiding if we understand what it is which is offered. It is of such a nature as necessarily to involve a twofold effect, caused by a twofold attitude towards it.
1. The Gospel addresses itself to all men--man as man--not to what is sectional or accidental, not to classes, not to schools, not to the elite. It is broad and universal.. It speaks no dialect of a province, but the universal language. It is addressed to Man as Man. We have all of us one human heart.' It appeals to the noble and the peasant, to the beggar on the dunghill and to the prince on his throne, in precisely the same fashion. It is equal as the providence of God, impartial as the light, universal as the air which reddens equally the blood that flows in long-descended veins and that of the foundling on the streets. In its sublime universality there are no distinctions. Death and the Gospel know no ranks. In both, the rich and the poor meet together, the Lord is the Maker of them all.' In Christ Jesus there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision.' The blue sky which bends above all alike is like that great word.
2. It treats all as utterly helpless.
3. It offers to all Redemption as their most pressing want. Consequently, in substance it is the gift not of culture, but deliverance, and in form it is not a theory but a fact, not a system of credenda but an action, not an -elegy but a power.
4. It demands from all submission and trust.
These being the characteristics, consider--
