ainst it. I shall never forget how, one evening in his study,
a minister, who had outgrown the old traditions, explained to me
the meaning of the reconciliation. He assured me that God is love,
invisible, eternal. Christ, His Son, is also love. In becoming at
one with the Son we become at one with the Father. This is the
at-one-ment. And when that truth broke upon me my heart began to sing:

Just as I am--Thy love unknown
Hath broken every barrier down;
Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come!

I wonder in telling this if I have not spoken the experience of many
of you this morning. It is impossible to love God if we feel that He
is stern and despotic, and must be appeased by the sufferings of an
innocent man. The New Testament nowhere lends any support to that
idea. Everywhere the New Testament assures us that God is the lover
of men, that He initiates the movement for man's redemption. "God so
loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son...." "Herein is
love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us." "God commendeth
his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us." "The Father spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for
us all." "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." "I and my Father
are one." These are only a few of the passages in which we are told
that God is our Savior. When an old Scotchman once heard the text
announced, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten
Son," he exclaimed, "Oh, that was love indeed! I could have given
myself, but I never could have given my boy." This, then, is the very
highest love of which it is possible for the human mind to think: the
love of a father that surrenders his son to sufferings and death.

And this brings us to the second great truth which is outgrowing
increasingly clear in the consciousness of the Church. The death of
Jesus is the revelation of an experience in the heart of God. God is
the sin-bearer of the world. He bears our sins on His mind and heart.
There are three conceptions of God: the savage, the pagan, and the
Christian. God, according to the savage conception, is vengeful, and
capricious, and vindictive. He is a great savage hidden in the sky. We
have all outgrown that. According to the pagan idea, He is indifferent
to the wants and woes of men. He does not care for men. He is not
interested in them. He does not sympathize with them. He does not
suffer over their gri