"Any one who does not take up his cross and follow where I lead is not worthy of Me" (Matt. 10:38, Weymouth)
Look at the Cross, if you would measure sin aright, your little daily trespasses and falls; look at its cost to God; look at the man Christ Jesus on the tree, and take it in. That is the perfect picture of how God always is affected by it, every time so hurt, so wounded, so heartbroken! So will you grasp its hideousness and horror, and be filled with loathing for this awful thing. Our one chance, Newman thought, is that we be shocked by sin. Look upon Him whom we have pierced, and surely that must shock us, till we hate what caused Him that, fly from it, find a new power surging up within us that gives the strength to cast it forth, and make an end of it.
Or take the biggest thing in the whole universe, the deepest, the most inexhaustible, God's love. How busy we have been all down the ages with our wretched little foot-rules upon that, complacently measuring the immeasurable, marking it off--this is its length, and this its breadth--fixing the bounds and limits of this illimitable thing, setting up barriers which we declare it never passes, and marks which we say with assurance it can never overflow, declaring confidently this and that it cannot overlook, and that and this it never does, judging of God, in short, by our own petulant, foolish, sullen, earthly human hearts!
