I go a step further, and say it is most cruel for a man not to love Jesus.  The meanest thing I could do for you would be needlessly to hurt your feelings.  Sharp words sometimes cut like a dagger.  An unkind look will sometimes rive like the lightning.  An unkind deed may overmaster a sensitive spirit, and if you have made up your mind that you have done wrong to any one, it does not take you two minutes to make up your mind to go and apologize.  Now, Christ is a bundle of delicacy and sensitiveness.  How you have shocked His nerves!  How you have broken His heart!

Did you, my brother, ever measure the meaning of that one passage:  “Behold, I stand at the door and knock”?  It never came to me as it did this morning while I was thinking on this subject.  “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”  Some January day, the thermometer five degrees below zero, the wind and sleet beating mercilessly against you, you go up the steps of a house where you have a very important errand.  You knock with one knuckle.  No answer.  You are very earnest, and you are freezing.  The next time you knock harder.  After awhile with your fist you beat against the door.  You must get in, but the inmate is careless or stubborn, and he does not want you in.  Your errand is a failure.  You go away.

The Lord Jesus Christ comes up on the steps of your heart, and with very sore hand he knocks hard at the door of your soul.  He is standing in the cold blasts of human suffering.  He knocks.  He says:  “Let me in.  I have come a great way.  I have come all the way from Nazareth, from Bethlehem, from Golgotha.  Let Me in.  I am shivering and blue with the cold.  Let Me in.  My feet are bare but for their covering of blood.  My head is uncovered but for a turban of brambles.  By all these wounds of foot, and head, and heart, I beg you to let Me in.  Oh, I have been here a great while, and the night is getting darker.  I am faint with hunger.  I am dying to get in.  Oh, lift the latch—­shove back the bolt!  Won’t you let Me in?  Won’t you?  ’Behold, I stand at the door and knock!’”

But after awhile, my brother, the scene will change.  It will be another door, but Christ will be on the other side of it.  He will be on the inside, and the rejected sinner will be on the outside, and the sinner will come up and knock at the door, and say:  “Let me in, let me in.  I have come a great way.  I came all the way from earth.  I am sick and dying.  Let me in.  The merciless storm beats my unsheltered head.  The wolves of a great night are on my track.  Let me in.  With both fists I beat against this door.  Oh, let me in.  Oh, Christ, let me in.  Oh, Holy Ghost, let me in.  Oh, God, let me in.  Oh, my glorified kindred, let me in.”  No answer save the voice of Christ, who shall say:  “Sinner, when I stood at your door you would not let Me in, and now you are standing at My door, and I can not let you in.  The day of your grace is past.  Officer of the law, seize him.”  And while the arrest is going on, all the myriads of heaven rise on gallery and throne, and cry with loud voice, that makes the eternal city quake from capstone to foundation, saying:  “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.”