aler that now all had been done that could be done
to make God known to men and to identify Him with men. God's purpose had
ever been one and indivisible. Declared to men in various ways, a hint
here, a broad light there, now by a gleam of insight in the mind of a
prophet, now by a deed of heroism in king or leader, through rude
symbolic contrivances and through the tenderest of human affections and
the highest human thoughts God had been making men ever more and more
sensible that His one purpose was to come closer and closer into
fellowship with them and to draw them into a perfect harmony with Him.
Forgiveness and deliverance from sin were provided for them, knowledge
of God's law and will that they might learn to know and to serve
Him--all these were secured when Jesus cried, "It is finished."

Why, then, does John just at this point of the life of Jesus see so many
evidences of the fulfilment of all prophecy? Need we ask? Is not
suffering that which is the standing problem of life? Is it not grief
and trouble and sorrow which press home upon our minds most convincingly
the reality of sin? Is it not death which is common to all men of every
age, race, station, or experience? And must not One who identifies
Himself with men identify Himself in this if in anything? It is the
cross of Jesus that stands before the mind of John as the completion of
that process of incarnation, of entrance into human experience, which
fills his Gospel; it is here he sees the completion and finishing of
that identification of God with man he has been exhibiting throughout.
The union of God with man is perfected when God submits Himself to the
last darkest experience of man. To some it seems impossible such a thing
should be; it seems either unreal, unthought-out verbiage, or blasphemy.
To John, after he had seen and pondered the words and the life of Jesus,
all his ideas of the Father were altered. He learned that God is love,
and that to infinite love, while there remains one thing to give, one
step of nearness to the loved to be taken, love has not its perfect
expression. It came upon him as a revelation that God was really in the
world. Are we to refuse to God any true participation in the strife
between good and evil? Is God to be kept out of all reality? Is He
merely to look on, to see how His creatures will manage, how this and
that man will bear himself heroically, but Himself a mere name, a lay
figure crowned but otiose, doing nothi