And John’s share in this partnership message adds a simple bold touch of colouring that makes the picture a masterpiece, the masterpiece.  This King who serves, and is nearest of kin to us, is also nearest of kin to God.  He is not only of the blood royal, and the blood human, but of the blood divine.  He was with God before calendars came into use.  He was the God of that creative Genesis week.  He came on an errand down to the earth, and when the errand was done, and well done, He went back home, bearing on His person the marks of His fidelity to the Father’s errand.  This is John’s bit of rich high colouring.

And so we are nearest of kin to God through Jesus.  Kinship is always a matter of blood.  There is a double kinship, through the blood of inheritance, and the blood of sacrifice.  Our inherited kinship of blood has been lost.  But His blood of sacrifice has made a new kinship.  We had broken the entail of our inheritance clean beyond mending.  We were outcasts by our own act.  But He cast in.  His lot with us, and so drew us back and up and in.  He made a new entail through His blood.  And that new entail is as unbreakable as the old broken one is unmendable.  And so we come into the family of a King.  And we are kingliest in character when we are Christliest in spirit and action.  We are most like the King when we are helping others.

Our true motto, in our relation to our fellows, is:  “I am among you as he that serveth.”  Towel and basin, bended knee and comforted pilgrim-feet and refreshed spirit,—­this is our family crest.  We’re kin to all the race through Jesus.  Black skin and white, yellow and brown; round heads and long, slanting eyes and oval, in slum alley and palatial home, below the equator and above it,—­all are our kinsmen.

We are reaching highest when we are stooping lowest to help some one up.  We’re nearest like God in character when we’re getting nearest in touch to those needing help.  We are kingliest and Godliest and Christliest when we’re controlled by men’s needs, but always under the higher control of the Holy Spirit.

This is the composite message of the four Gospels; and this is its practical human outworking.

God on a Wooing Errand.

But it’s the other John message we are especially after just now.  There’s another message of John’s book quite distinct from this, though naturally allied with it.  And this other is the crowding message of his book.  Its thought crowds in upon you till every other is crowded into second place.  And as it gets hold of you it crowds your mind and heart and life till every other is either crowded out, or crowded to a lower place; out, if it jars; lower place, if it agrees, for every agreeing bit yields to the lead of this tremendous message.

But one must get hold of John before John’s message gets hold of him.  John was swayed by a passion.  It was a fiery passion flaming through all his life.  It burned through him as the fierce forest fire burns through the underbrush.  Every base thing was eaten up by its flame.  Every less worthy thing came under its heat.  It melted and mellowed and moulded his whole being.