Horatius Bonar, “The Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ”
Such were the evil things connected with the cross, which by the work done by the Son of God have all turned into good. All our evils He took upon Him that He might secure for us all the good belonging to Himself. For condemnation, He gives us pardon; for shame, honour and glory; for weakness, strength; for pain, ease and comfort; for the curse, the blessing; for rejection, acceptance; for hatred, love; for death, life everlasting. He that believeth hath all these things. All the evil passes to Him, and all the good to us, on our crediting the testimony of the Holy Ghost to the cross and the things done there.
This cross, where so many evil things meet, is the place where all good things are to be found. God gathered all the evil to that spot, that He might utterly make away with it, through Him who took all the evil on Himself, that He might bring out of it only good. At the cross it was consumed by fire: it was buried out of sight. The crucifixion transformed evil into good.
(It is a little sad to note that Bonar did not always keep up to this level of understanding; when he is good, as here, he is wonderful, but his doctrine and thinking are so weak on certain points, it is no surprise that Dabney had occasion to criticize him in his article called “The Theology of the Plymouth Brethren”, available for download here.)