He has finished _His Father's business_, He has dealt with sinners and
saints, and has finally disclosed to us the secrets of the Soul and the
Body of His that are the hope of both sinners and saints alike. And
there is no more for Him to do.

An entirely new Beginning, then, is at hand, now that the Last Sabbath
is come--the Last Sabbath, so much greater than the First as Redemption
is greater than Creation. For Creation is a mere introduction to the
Book of Life; it is the arrangement of materials that are to be thrown
instantly into confusion again by man, who should be its crown and
master. The Old Testament is one medley of mistakes and fragments and
broken promises and violated treaties, to reach its climax in the
capital Mistake of Calvary, when men indeed _knew not what they did._
And even God Himself in the New Testament, as man in the Old, has gone
down in the catastrophe and hangs here mutilated and broken. Real life,
then, is now to begin.

Yet, strangely enough, He calls it an End rather than a Beginning.
_Consummatum est!_

I. The one and only thing in human life that God desires to end is Sin.
There is not a pure joy or a sweet human relationship or a selfless
ambition or a divine hope which He does not desire to continue and to be
crowned and transfigured beyond all ambition and all hope. On the
contrary, He desires only to end that one single thing which ruins
relationships and spoils joy and poisons aspirations. For up to the
present there is not one page of history which has not this blot upon
it.