God Deals With Us as Individuals

God deals with us, (certainly for the most part,) as individuals, and not in masses. When he requires men to repent of sin, to exercise gratitude, to love, and the like, the requisition is obviously made upon them as individuals, as separate from and as independent of others. It is not possible to conceive of any other way, in which obedience to the requisition can be rendered. Nor is it conceivable that the remedial effect of the atonement should be realized in any other way than this. How is it possible, if I, in my own person, have suffered the wound of sin, that a remedy, which is general and does not admit of any specific and personal appropriation, should answer my purpose? Furthermore, in dying for all, in other words, in furnishing a common salvation, available to all on their acceptance of the same, Christ necessarily died for me as an individual, since the common mass or race of men is made up of individuals, and since I am one of that common mass or race. And indeed we can have no idea of a community or mass of men, except as a congregation or collection of separate persons. In dying for the whole on certain conditions, he necessarily, therefore, on the same conditions, died for the individuals composing that whole.

The Mystery of the Kingdom

The mystery of the kingdom lies
In this, that Christ "hath died for me"
But see, in that great sacrifice,
The other truth, "I die for Thee."

The life, on bleeding Calvary given,
Taught us the way our life to save.
All truth, all good, and God, and heaven,
Are found in giving all we have.

We  give up all, and all resume;
We die the death, and life is born;
Without the shadows of the tomb,
There comes no resurrection morn.

Down to the grave then let us haste,
By toiling, suffering, bleeding, giving;
'Tis only thus our souls can taste
The risen bliss of heavenly living.

— from Christ in the Soul (1872) V.