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The Fundamentals. affirm, that He before He was manifested, takes away sinj. There is a sense in which that is true; but “He was mani fested to take away sins”. The passion revealed in the cross was indeed the passion of God, but the passion of God be came dynamic in human life when it became manifest through human form, in the perfection of a life, and the mystery of a death. Man’s will is the factor always to be dealt with, and whereas the sin of man was gathered into the consciousness of God, and created the sorrow of God from the very begin ning, it is only when that fact of the sorrow of Godhead is wrought out into visibility by manifestation, that the will of man can ever be captured—or ever constrained to the position of trust and obedience which is necessary for his practical and effectual restoration to righteousness. Wherever man thus yields himself, trusting—that is the condition—his sins are taken away, lifted. If it be declared that God might have wrought this self same deliverance without suffering, our answer is that the man who says so knows nothing about sin. Sin and suffering are co-existent. The moment there is sin, there is suffering. The moment there is sin and suffering in a human being it is in God multiplied. “The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world.” From the moment when man in his sin be came a child of sorrow, the sorrow was most keenly felt in heaven. The man who is burdened with a sense of sin I would ask to contemplate the Person manifested. There is not one of us of whom it is not true that we live and move and have our being in God. God is infinitely more than I am; infinitely more than the whole human race from its first to its last. If infinitely more, then all my life is in Him. If in the mystery of Incarnation there became manifest the truth that He, God, lifted sin, then I can trust. If that be the cleaving of the rock, then I can say as never before—■
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