to the Lord's special mission: the Lord tells him it is not enough to
have accepted him as the Messiah; he must recognize his doings as the
work he had come into the world to do, and as in their nature so divine
as to be the very business of the Son of God in whom the Father was well
pleased.

Wherein then consisted the goodness of the news which he opened his
mouth to give them? What was in the news to make the poor glad? Why was
his arrival with such words in his heart and mouth, the coming of the
kingdom?

All good news from heaven, is of _truth_--essential truth, involving
duty, and giving and promising help to the performance of it. There can
be no good news for us men, except of uplifting love, and no one can be
lifted up who will not rise. If God himself sought to raise his little
ones without their consenting effort, they would drop from his foiled
endeavour. He will carry us in his arms till we are able to walk; he
will carry us in his arms when we are weary with walking; he will not
carry us if we will not walk.

Very different are the good news Jesus brings us from certain prevalent
representations of the gospel, founded on the pagan notion that
suffering is an offset for sin, and culminating in the vile assertion
that the suffering of an innocent man, just because he is innocent, yea
perfect, is a satisfaction to the holy Father for the evil deeds of his
children. As a theory concerning the atonement nothing could be worse,
either intellectually, morally, or spiritually; announced as the gospel
itself, as the good news of the kingdom of heaven, the idea is monstrous
as any Chinese dragon. Such a so-called gospel is no gospel, however
accepted as God sent by good men of a certain development. It is evil