Calvary’s Cross by R. F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 27, 1873

Calvary’s Cross.

By R. F. Cottrell

WHAT law was nailed to it? Evidently no other than that which prefigured the great offering for sin there to be made—the law of typical service which expired by limitation when the great sin-offering to which it pointed supervened. The moral law, the primary law, the law, the transgression of which made man a sinner, is not made void, but established by the scene of Calvary. Christ magnified this law in his life, in his teaching, and most of all by his death. The sacredness of this law is shown in the fact that the divine Son of God “poured out his soul unto death” for our transgressions of it. If you would see the perfect holiness and exceeding value of that law, look to Calvary. Or, if you would justly appreciate the exceeding sinfulness of sin, mark how it put the Lamb of God to death!

This is the way the pious of a hundred years ago viewed it. Says Wm. Carvosso: “This morning I have been meditating on the dreadful evil of sin. It was sin that caused angels to become devils; and it was sin that caused Adam to be driven from Paradise; by sin he lost the favor and image of God, and brought death into the world with all our woe! I see it was a manifestation of God’s just displeasure against sin, when he swept off a whole world at one stroke. But, O my blessed Saviour! when I turn my thoughts for a moment to reflect on what thou hast done and suffered to redeem the ruined race, I have a still clearer discovery of its dreadful evil. When I behold thee at Pilate’s bar with thy sacred body ‘all one wound,’ and follow thee to Calvary, and see thee stretched on yonder tree,’ fainting and ‘crushed beneath my load,’ crying out, ‘My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me,’ I see the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and am constrained to say,—

‘O Lamb of God, was ever pain, Was ever love, like thine?’”

R. F. COTTRELL.