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the breeze, but just a wooden cross. There is no captain standing with uplifted weapon. The Captain of our salvation hangs nailed thereon, and a weapon has been driven into His side.
"Even here He does not hang thus to win a mere emotional pity, but He reveals the long, quiet, suffering, patient ways of God. The fact that humbles me to the dust and overwhelms me with shame is that there stands on the threshold of the human life the eternal Christ, the Prince of Glory, and in His hand are all the force I have described.
"Between Him and the object of His passionate longing is only the frail barrier of the human will. If He lifted so much as a little finger, our paltry defenses would go down in ruins, but, because of this tremendous respect for our personality, which reveals the eternal restraint of God, this great Lover of the soul will never be its burglar, but will wait on the threshold until we ourselves rise and let Him in.
"Behold," He says, "I stand at the door and knock." What a respect for personality. What a divine restraint. What a majestic love. I listen down the corridor of the years for any sound of the dread trumpet of an angel summoning men to repentance. I only hear the voice of a Baby crying in a manger, and a whisper from lips tortured by pain, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
[Acknowledgements are due to Matthew Block for drawing attention to this source material, and for supplying the extracts from Weatherhead's book]
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