The name is absent

A Baccalaureate Sermon 207

will establish harmony with God, and develop godlike traits
and qualities. Where love is commanded as the impulse
under which cooperation is to be rendered to God, this
is possible for men because He first loved us; because His
character is what it is; because He has revealed himself not
simply as Omnipotence, but as the Heavenly Father, as the
Crucified Creator. If we conceive of Him only as power,
it is a difficult commandment; but if we conceive of Him as
the Father of individual lives, as revealing Himself to us
in Christ, as the Divine Personal Being taking upon Him
in the Person of the Eternal Son the form of a servant and
enduring the sacrifice of the Cross—then the commandment
is not difficult. If we realize not only the Divinity of Christ,
but likewise the Christlikeness of God; if we realize that
in Christ God is revealed in the immeasurable self-denial
with which Omnipotence humbles Himself in behalf of the
eternal destinies of men; then the power of God must have
for us transfigured meaning, and our spirits must become
captive to His love.

The Gospel of Christ, proclaiming that God so loved
the world as to give for men His Only-Begotten Son, calling
men to unity with God through the Son Incarnate, declares
and explains a redemption of surpassing glory; a redemption
signifying a recreation into holiness, a great atonement and
at-one-ment in which through Christ the human character
may come humbly to image the divine. Our Lord said to
His disciples that henceforth He called them not servants,
but friends. St. John declares that “as many as received
Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God,
even to them that believe on His name.” St, John i, 12.

The greatness of the salvation in Christ is not that
through mercy we may escape punishment, but that the evil
in us may be taken out; that we may through Him truly

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