s
involved in the impression He makes upon us, we come to our conception
of His deity; and through Him we discover ourselves in touch with the
Highest there is in the universe, with the Most High. Calvary becomes,
for those who look trustingly at the Crucified, a window through which
we see into the life of the Lord of heaven and earth. Jesus' sin-bearing
is for us a revelation of the eternal sin-bearing of the God and Father
of us all. Behind the cross of wood outside the gate of Jerusalem we
catch sight of a vast, age-enduring cross in the heart of the Eternal,
forced on Him generation after generation by His children's unlikeness
to their Father--forced, but borne by Him, in conscientious devotion to
them, as willingly as Jesus went to Golgotha. If at Calvary we find the
rocky coast-line of human thought and feeling opposing the inflow of
God, the incoming waters break into the silver spray of speech, and
their one word is Love.

In this revelation of our Father is the assurance of our forgiveness.
Such a God is not one who may or may not be gracious, as He wills; it is
"His property always to have mercy." He would not be just in His own
eyes, were He unmerciful; He is just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Like His Son, He owes us Himself;
and His forgiveness is freely ours in the measure that we are able to
receive it, that is, in the measure in which we have forgiven others.

Jesus at Calvary proves Himself both our Substitute and our Exemplar. He
who finds and opens a trail to a mountain-top encounters and removes
obstacles, which none of those who come after him need to meet; he makes
the path _for them_. When the sinless Jesus found Himself socially
involved with His brethren in the low valley of the world's sinfulness,
and looked off to the summit of His Father's perfectness, He felt a
separation between the whole world and God; and He gave Himself to end
it. We shall never know the uncertainties that shrouded Him and the
temptations He faced, from the experience in the wilderness at the
outset to the anguish of His spirit in Gethsemane and the consciousness
of dereliction on the cross. The "if it be possible" of His prayer
suggests the alternative routes He sought to find, before He resigned
Himself to opening the path by His blood. Since His death there is "a
new and living way" for those who know Him, which stretches from the
lowest point of their abasement to the very peak