—­“The Hound of Heaven.”

    “Behold, I stand at the door and knock:  if any
    man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in
    to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

    —­Rev. iii. 20.

II

The Wooing Lover

(John i. 1-18.)

In His Own Image.

Love gives.  It gives freely and without stint, yet always thoughtfully.  It gives itself out, its very life.  This is its life, to give its life.  It lives most by giving most.  So it comes into fullness of life.

So it gets.  A thing of life, in its own image, comes walking eagerly with outstretched arms to its embrace.  It gives that it may get.  Yet the giving is the greater.  It brings most joy.

This is the very essence of life, this giving creating spirit.  It is everywhere, in lower life and higher and highest, wherever the touch of God has come.  The sun gives itself out in life and light and warmth.  And out to greet it comes a bit of itself—­the fine form and sweet fragrance of the rose, the tender blade of grass, the unfolding green of the leaf, the wealth of the soil, the song of the bird and the grateful answer of all nature.

The hen sits long patient days on her nest.  And forth comes cheeping life in her own image, answering the call of her mothering spirit.  The mother-bird in the nest in the crotch of the tree gives her life day by day in brooding love.  And her wee nestling offspring, in her own image, answers with glad increase of strength and growth.

Father and mother of our human kind give of their very life that new life may come.  And under the overshadowing touch of an unseen Presence comes a new life made in their image, and in His who broods unseen over all three.  And over the life wrecked by sin broods the Spirit of God.  And out through the doorway of an opening will, comes a new creature of winsome life in the very image of that brooding Spirit of God.

This is the holy commonplace of all life.  It is the touch of God.  It is everywhere about us, and beneath and above.  The father-mother Spirit of God broods over all our common life.  And when things go wrong, He broods a bit closer and tenderer.  He meets every need of the life He has created.  And He meets it in the same way, by giving Himself.

And there’s always the response.  The fragrance of the rose answers the sun.  The pipped shell brings the longed-for answer to the gladdened mother-bird.  The ever wondrous babe-eyes give unspeakable answer to the yearning of father and mother heart.  The heart of man leaps at the call of his God.

This makes quite clear the wondrous response men gave Jesus when He walked among us.  Jesus was God coming a bit closer in His brooding love to mend a break and restore a blurred image.  And men answered Him.  They couldn’t help it.  How they came!  They didn’t understand Him, but they felt Him.  They couldn’t resist the tender, tremendous pull upon their hearts of His mere presence.