n, _through_ our choosing and our friends' helping.

I said it isn't a matter of blood, of lineage. Yet it is. That statement
must be modified. Family relationship is of necessity a matter of blood.
That's the very blood of it. This _is_ a matter of blood; but not _our_
blood; _His._ There has to be a new strain of blood. Our blood is
stained. It is at fault. It is impure. There's been a bad break far back
there in the family record, a complete break. We were powerless either
to purify the stock, or to get over that gap, even if we admitted the
need.

There had to be a bridging of that gap. It had to be from the upper
side. The other fell short. The gap was still there. There had to be a
new strain of blood. This was, this _is_, the only way. We get into that
old first family only by the Father of the family reaching over the
break and putting in the new strain of blood, the germ of the family
life, and so lifting us up to the new level. And Jesus was God doing
just that.

Our Tented Neighbour.

Then John begins a new paragraph. He goes back to tell just how the
thing was done. Listen: _the Word, this wondrous One, became a man, one
of ourselves, and pitched His tent in close amongst our tents._There's
only a stretch of canvas between Him and any of us. He wanted to get
close, close enough to help, yet never infringing upon the privacy of
our tents, only coming in as He was invited. But He has remarkable
ears. A whisper reaches Him at once. And He is out of His tent into ours
to help at the faintest call. That was why He pitched His tent in
amongst ours, to be one of ourselves, and to be at hand in our need.

And then a touch of awe creeps into John's spirit as he writes, and the
light flashes out of his eye with the intensity of an old picture
surging to the front of his imagination again. There was more than a
_tent_ here, more than a _man_. Out of the man, out through the tent
doorway, and tent canvas, flashes a wondrous, soft, clear light, that
transfigures canvas and tent and man. John's face glows as he writes,
"and we beheld His _glory_."

I suppose he is thinking chiefly of that still night on white Hermon.
This despised Man had called the inner three away from the crowd, in the
dark of night, and had gently drawn aside the exquisite drapery of His
humanity, and let some of the inner glory shine out before their eyes.
So the way was lightened for them as their feet were turned with His
down towards