When the Greeks in Passion week desired to see Him, He exclaimed: “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw _all_ unto me.” The cross of Jesus was to draw humanity around it, by its infinite love and sorrow, by the perfect apprehension there was in it of the world’s guilt and need, and the perfect submission to the sentence of God’s law against man’s sin. So wherever the gospel was preached by St Paul, it won Gentile hearts for Christ. Greek and Jew found themselves weeping together at the foot of the cross, sharing one forgiveness and baptized into one Spirit. The union of Caiaphas and Pilate in the condemnation of Jesus and the mingling of the Jewish crowd with the Roman soldiers at His execution were a tragic symbol of the new age that was coming. Israel and the Gentiles were accomplices in the death of the Messiah--the former of the two the more guilty partner in the counsel and deed. If this Jesus whom they slew and hanged on a tree was indeed the Christ, God’s chosen, then what availed their Abrahamic sonship, their covenants and law-keeping, their proud religious eminence? They had killed their Christ; they had forfeited their calling. His blood was on them and on their children. Those who seemed nigh to God, at the cross of Christ were found far off,--that both together, the far and the near, might be reconciled and brought back to God. “He shut up all unto disobedience, that He might have mercy upon all.” FOOTNOTES: [86] Rom. i. 19-23; comp. John i. 10: “He [the true Light] was _in the world_, and the world knew Him not.” [87] Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo. Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna; Jam nova progenies cœlo demittitur alto. Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum Desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea mundo, Casta, fave, Lucina. [88] Observe the perfect participle ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι, which signifies an abiding fact or fixed condition. Similar is the turn of expression in ch. iii. 9, and in Col. i. 26, Rom. xvi. 25, Matt. xiii. 35. CHAPTER X. _THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION._ “For He is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, _even_ the law of commandments _contained_ in ordinances, that He might create in Himself of the twain one new man, _so_ making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: and He came and preached good tidings of peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh: for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father.”--EPH. ii. 14-18.