is own. He came because His
own drew Him. Out from the bosom of His Father, into the womb of a
virgin maid, and into the heart of a race He came. Out of the
glory-blaze above into the gloom of the shadow, and the glare of false
lights below, He came.

Out of the love of a Father's heart, the Only-begotten came, into
contact with the hate that was the only-begotten of sin, that He might
woo us men up, and up, and up, into the only-begotten life with the
Father.

Jesus was God on a wooing errand to the earth.

III

The Lover Wooing

_A Group of Pictures Illustrating How the Wooing Was Done, and How
the Lover Was Received_

"Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy
Came the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat--
_Naught shelters thee, who will not shelter Me_.'"

--"_The Hound of Heaven_."

"O thou hope of Israel, the Saviour thereof in the time of trouble,
why shouldst thou be as a sojourner in the land, and as a wayfaring
man that spreadeth his tent for a night?"--_Jeremiah xiv. 8_.

He came unto his own home, and they who were his own kinsfolk
received him not into the house, but left him standing outside in
the cold and dark of the winter's night. But as many as did receive
him he received into his home, and gave each a seat in the inner
circle at the hearthfire of God.--_John i. II, 12. Free
translation_.

III

The Lover Wooing

(John i. 19-xii. 50)

The Mother of all Love-Words.

Brooding is love at its tenderest and best It is love giving its best,
and so bringing out the best possible in the one brooded over.

Look into the nest where the word itself was brooded. It is a warm
something, warm in itself, not a borrowed warmth. The warmth is its
chief trait. It is a soft tender unfailing cuddling warmth. It cuddles
and coos, it glows and floods a gentle comforting stimulating warmth.
And the best there is lying asleep within the thing so brooded over
awakes.

It answers to that creative mothering warmth. It pushes out, against all
obstacles, and comes shyly and winsomely, but steadily and strongly, out
to the brooding warmth, growing as it comes and growing most as it comes
into closest touch with the warm brooder.

Brooding is the mother of all love-words,--friendship, wooing, pitying,
help