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“I may further observe, that however much we should rejoice to discover that the eternal scheme of God–the necessary completion, let us remember, of his Almighty Nature–did not require the absolute perdition of any spirit called by Him into existence, we are certainly not entitled to consider the perpetual misery of many individuals as incompatible with sovereign love.”

“In the Supreme Nature those two capacities of Perfect Love and Perfect Joy are indivisible. Holiness and Happiness, says an old divine, are two several notions of one thing. Equally inseparable are the notions of Opposition to Love and Opposition to Bliss. Unless therefore the heart of a created being is at one with the heart of God, it cannot but be miserable. Moreover, there is no possibility of continuing forever partly with God and partly against him; we must either be capable by our nature of entire accordance with His will, or we must be incapable of anything but misery, further than He may for awhile ‘not impute our trespasses to us,’ that is, He may interpose some temporary barrier between sin and its attendant pain. For in the Eternal Idea of God a created spirit is perhaps not seen, as a series of successive states, of which some that are evil might be compensated by others that are good, but as one indivisible object of these almost infinitely divisible modes, and that either in accordance with His own nature, or in opposition to it….

“Before the gospel was preached to man, how could a human soul have this love, and this consequent life? I see no way; but now that Christ has excited our love for him by showing unutterable love for us; now that we know him as an Elder Brother, a being of like thoughts, feelings, sensations, sufferings, with ourselves, it has become possible to love as God loves, that is, to love Christ, and thus to become united in heart to God. Besides, Christ is the express image of God’s person; in loving him we are sure we are in a state of readiness to love the Father, whom we see, he tells us, when we see him. Nor is this all; the tendency of love is towards a union so intimate as virtually to amount to identification; when then by affection towards Christ we have become blended with his being, the beams of eternal love, falling, as ever, on the one beloved object, will include us in him, and their returning flashes of love out of his personality will carry along with them some from our own, since ours has become confused with his, and so shall we be one with Christ and through Christ with God. Thus then we see the great effect of the Incarnation, as far as our nature is concerned, was to render human love for the Most High a possible thing. The Law had said, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength;’ and could men have lived by law, ‘which is the strength of sin,’ verily righteousness and life would have been by that law. But it was not possible, and all were concluded under sin, that in Christ might be the deliverance of all. I believe that Redemption” (i.e., what Christ has done and suffered for mankind) “is universal, in so far as it left no obstacle between man and God, but man’s own will: that indeed is in the power of God’s election, with whom alone rest the abysmal secrets of personality; but as far as Christ is concerned, his death was for all, since his intentions and affections were equally directed to all, and ‘none who come to him will he in any wise cast out.’

“I deprecate any hasty rejection of these thoughts as novelties. Christianity is indeed, as St. Augustin says, ‘pulchritudo tam antiqua;’ but he adds, ‘tam nova,’ for it is capable of presenting to every mind a new face of truth. The great doctrine, which in my judgment these observations tend to strengthen and illumine, the doctrine of personal love for a personal God, is assuredly no novelty, but has in all times been the vital principle of the Church. Many are the forms of antichristian heresy, which for a season have depressed and obscured that principle of life; but its nature is connective and resurgent; and neither the Papal Hierarchy with its pomp of systematized errors, not the worse apostasy of latitudinarian Protestantism, have ever so far prevailed, but that many from age to age have proclaimed and vindicated the eternal gospel of love, believing, as I also firmly believe, that any opinion which tends to keep out of sight the living and loving God, whether it substitute for Him an idol, an occult agency, or a formal creed, can be nothing better than a vain and portentous shadow projected from the selfish darkness of unregenerate man.”