to the brooding spirit, surely, the strong gentle
self-controlled life out of the warm womb of her brooding life. So comes
the child's higher birth, so preparing the way for the yet higher.

Now all this is at its native best in God. There only does it reach
finest fruitage. Some day we shall recognize the meaning of that modest
but tremendous little sentence,--_God is love_. This warm brooding
something that comes, gentle as the dawning light in the grey east,
fragrant as the dew of the new morning, irresistible in its pervasive
persuasive presence as the rays of the growing sun, giving to us warmth,
and life, and drawing out from within us warmth and life and beauty and
strength, all in its own image, this is the thing called love. This is
the thing that God is. As we know _it_ we are getting acquainted with
_Him_.

And if a break comes, instantly love in its grief sets itself with
warmth and renewed strength to the new harder brooding task. It gives
itself out yet more, regardless of cost, until in place of the broken
fragments there comes a finer sort of life out of the warm womb of love,
brooding, redeeming, bringing-back-again love. This is God. This is
Jesus. John shows us Jesus as a picture of the brooding God.

Five Pictures of Jesus.

There are five wondrous pictures of Jesus in these newer leaves of the
old Book. Three of them hang on the walls of Paul's tent-weaving
study-room. There's the Colossian picture, the _Creator-Jesus,_ infinite
in power, making all things above and below and around, and holding all
things together.[7]

Close by it in wondrous contrast is seen the Philippian picture. It is
the _Man-Jesus,_ emptied of all the upper-glory native to Him, bowing
down low and lower and lowest, till in the form of a slave He hangs on a
cross.[8]

And in contrast yet more striking and startling, close by its side hangs
the Ephesian picture. It is the _Enthroned-Jesus,_ back again in the
soft, blazing, blinding glory of the Father's presence, seated at His
right hand, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and
every name that is named. And as you stand awed before this picture
your eye is caught by the artist's remarque sketch at the bottom. It is
a broken Roman seal, and an open tomb, and a bird with swelling throat
singing joyously.[9]

Then there's John's later Patmos picture of the _Present-Jesus_,
standing now down on the earth in the midst of His candle-holding
Church,