having, but to give up life itself? To die for them; and, what is
bitterest of all, to die by their hands--to receive as their reward
for all his goodness to them a shameful death? If he dare submit to
that, then we should call his greatness of soul perfect.
Magnanimity, we should say, could rise no higher; in that would be
the perfection of goodness.

Surely your hearts answer, that this is true. When you hear of a
father sacrificing his own life for his children; when you hear of a
soldier dying for his country; when you hear of a clergyman or a
physician killing himself by his work, while he is labouring to save
the souls or the bodies of his fellow-creatures; then you feel--There
is goodness in its highest shape. To give up our lives for others is
one of the most beautiful, and noble, and glorious things on earth.
But to give up our lives, willingly, joyfully for men who
misunderstand us, hate us, despise us, is, if possible, a more
glorious action still, and the very perfection of perfect virtue.
Then, looking at Christ's cross, we see that, and even more--ay, far
more than that. The cross was the perfect token of the perfect
greatness of God, and of the perfect glory of God.

So on the cross, the Father justified himself to man; yea, glorified
himself in the glory of his crucified Son. On the cross God proved
himself to be perfectly just, perfectly good, perfectly generous,
perfectly glorious, beyond all that man could ever have dared to
conceive or dream. That God must be good, the wise heathens knew;
but that God was so utterly good that he could stoop to suffer, to
die, for men, and by men--that they never dreamed. That was the
mystery of God's love, which was hid in Christ from the foundation of
the world, and which was revealed at last upon the cross of Calvary