How precious, therefore, is the cross, in this its first phase, as the basis of the sinner's peace, the basis of his worship, and the basis of his eternal relationship with the God who is there so blessedly and so gloriously revealed! How precious to God, as furnishing him with a righteous ground on which to go in the full display of all his matchless perfections, and in his most gracious dealings with the sinner! So precious is it to God that, as a recent writer has well remarked, "All that he has said,--all that he has done, from the very beginning, indicates that it was ever uppermost in his heart. And no wonder! His dear and well-beloved Son was to hang there, between heaven and earth, the object of all the shame and suffering that men and devils could heap upon him, because he loved to do his Father's will, and redeem the children of his grace. It will be the grand centre of attraction, as the fullest expression of his love, throughout eternity." Then, as the basis of our practical discipleship and testimony, the cross demands our most profound consideration. In this aspect of it, I need hardly say, it is as perfect as in the former. The same cross which connects me with God has separated me from the world. A dead man is evidently done with the world; and hence the believer, having died in Christ, is done with the world; and, having risen with Christ, is connected with God, in the power of a new life, a new nature. Being thus inseparably linked with Christ, he of necessity participates in his acceptance with God, and in his rejection by the world. The two things go together. The former makes him a worshipper and a citizen in heaven, the latter makes him a witness and a stranger on earth. That brings him inside the veil; this puts him outside the camp. The one is as perfect as the other. If the cross has come between me and my sins, it has just as really come between me and the world. In the former case, it puts me into the place of peace with God; in the latter, it puts me into the place of hostility with the world, that is, in a moral point of view; though in another sense it makes me the patient, humble witness of that precious, unfathomable, eternal grace which is set forth in the cross.