cheeks--you couldn't have told which were the father's and which the
son's. Then they slept together until the morning light broke.

When sleep-time came the second night the father said, "Good-night,
mother. I'm going up with Phil again." And the second night he shared his
boy's punishment in the attic. And the third night when sleep-time came
again, again he said, "Mother, good-night. I'm going up with the boy." And
the third night he shared his son's punishment with him.

That boy, now a man grown, in the thews of his strength, my acquaintance
told me, is telling the story of Jesus with tongue of flame and life of
flame out in the heart of China.

Do you know, I think that is the best picture of God I have ever run
across in any gallery of life? It is not a perfect picture. No human
picture of God is perfect, except of course the Jesus human picture. The
boy's punishment was arbitrarily chosen by the father, unlike God's
dealings with our sin. But it is the tenderest and most real of any that
has come to me.

God couldn't take away sin. It's here. Very plainly it is here. And He
couldn't take away suffering, out of kindness to us. For suffering is
sin's index-finger pointing out danger. It is sin's voice calling loudly,
"Look out! there's something wrong." So He came down in the person of His
Son, Jesus, and lay down alongside of man for three days and nights, in
the place where sin drove man.

That's God! And that suggests graphically the great passion of His heart.
Sin was not ignored. Its lines stood sharply out. The boy in the garret
had two things burned into his memory, never to be erased: the wrong of