e God. The
child seemed surprised and on being told again, said in her childlike
simplicity, "I think He must be very lonesome." Well, the child was right
in the word used. God is lonesome, though for an utterly different reason
than was in the child's mind. God was lonesome that day, left standing
alone under the trees of the garden. He is lonesome for fellowship with
every one who stays away from Himself. That homely human word may well
express to us the longing of His heart.

Man went away from God that day, then he wandered farther away, then he
lost his way back, then he didn't want to come back. And away from God his
ideas about God got badly confused. His eyes grew blind to God's pleading
face, his ears dull and then deaf to God's voice. His will got badly
warped and bent out of shape morally, and his life sadly hurt by the sin
he had let in.[19]

And all this was very hard on God.[20] It _grieved_ Him at His heart. He
sent many messengers, one after another, through long years, but they were
treated as badly as they could be.[21] And at last God said to Himself,
"What more can I do? This is what I will do. I'll go down Myself and live
among them, and woo them back Myself." And so it was done. One day He
wrapped about Himself the garb of our humanity, and came in amongst us as
one of ourselves.[22] And He became known amongst us as Jesus. He had
spoken the world into being; now, in John's simple homely language, He
pitched His tent amongst our tents as our near neighbour and kinsman.[23]
Our Lord Jesus was the face of God looking into ours, the voice of God
speaking into the ears of our hearts, the hand of God reached down to make
a way back and then lead us along the way back again, the heart of God
coming in touch to warm ours and make us willing to go back.

It was a long road He came, as long as the distance we had gone away from
Him. And no measuring stick has yet been whittled out that can tell that
distance. We want to look a bit at the last lap of the road, the
earth-lap. It runs from the Bethlehem plain where He came in, to the
Olivet hilltop where He slipped away again up and back, for a time, until
things are ready for the next step in His plan.

The Rough Places.

The bit of earth-road began to get pretty rough before He had quite gotten
here. The pure gentle virgin-mother was under cruelly hurting suspicion on
the point about which a woman is properly most sensitive, and that too by
the on