4. I come now to urge the last motive, taken from the nature of the person, who says, “My son, give me thine heart.” That person is God; the most high, and holy God; the Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer of men, who gave us a being, and, when in a state of apostacy, took our nature, and was manifest in the flesh, that he might save us from sin. The three persons in the Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit, unite in the request; especially the second, who groaned beneath our weight of woes, and sunk under the burden of our imputed guilt; whose bitter passion bespoke the horrid nature of sin, and the greatness of redeeming love. It is Jesus, the chiefest among ten thousand, that asks your hearts, O sinners! They are the purchase of his blood; and can you deny him his own dear-bought property? See him in his bloody sweat, or view him bleeding and mangled on the cross, and then say, whether he must not have loved your hearts, when Gethsemane’s garden and Calvary’s mount have been witnesses to the intenseness of his desire to win them? Fancy that you were present at the tragical scene of his sufferings, and that you saw him this moment nailed to the accursed tree; and that, while in this state of ignominy and torture, you were accosted with the following address from his precious dying lips:—“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold and see, if there was ever sorrow like unto my sorrow! Behold in my hands and feet the marks of my dying love; and see, there gushes forth a fountain in which the guilty may wash and be clean. While my temples stream with blood, they are disgraced with a crown of thorns that lacerate them, which I contentedly wear, that a diadem of glory may encircle your brow. My heart is big with sorrow, and upon my eye-lids is the shadow of death. My soul is transfixed with the arrows of Almighty vengeance, the poison whereof is the bitterest ingredient in my cup of sorrow. For your sins I suffer all this, and die to save you from death eternal. The last drop of my blood shall be shed to expiate your guilt, and the merit of it shall cleanse the earth, and perfume heaven. My dying breath shall be spent in prayer for the persons who brought me to this shame and pain; and I shall rejoice in this travail of my soul, if you look to me for salvation. I die to win your heart. Do not plant additional daggers in mine, or tear open my wounds afresh by denying my request. O, my son! give ME thine heart.”—Thus may we suppose the dying love of Jesus to address us. And who can withstand such philanthropy, or withhold his heart from a Redeemer, who asks it in agony and blood? A believer, contemplating his crucified Lord in such circumstances of love and sorrow, would say, with the poet,