The Earliest Calvary Picture.


There's a great passion burning in the heart of God. It is tenderly warm
and tenaciously strong. Its fires never burn low, nor lose their fine
glow. That passion is to win man back home again. The whole world of man
is included in its warm, eager reach.

The old home hearth-fire of God is lonely since man went away. The family
circle is broken. God will not rest until that old home circle is complete
again, and every voice joining in the home songs.

It is an overmastering passion, the overmastering passion of God's
heart. It has guided and controlled all His thoughts and plans for man
from the first. The purpose of winning man, and the whole race, back again
is the dominant gripping passion of God's heart to-day. Everything is made
to bend to this one end.

When Eden's tragedy came so early, to darken the pages of this old Book,
and, far worse, to darken the pages of human life, there is a great
glimpse of this passion of God's heart in the guarding of those Eden
gates. The presence of the angels with their sword of flame told plainly
of a day when man would be coming back again to the old Eden home of God.
The place must be carefully guarded for him.

This is a love passion, a passion of love. And love itself is the master
passion both of the human heart and of God's heart. Nothing can grip and
fill and sway the heart either of man or God like that.