ly and publicly
decreed. The two climaxes touch. And it is tremendously significant that
whereas they sometimes question His miraculous power, they could not
deny His restraining power over themselves. How gladly they would if
only they could.

And all this, mark you keenly, is a bit of His wooing. The wooing is
ever the dominant thought in His heart. So He was revealing to them who
He was. He claims to be the Son of God, their kingly Messiah. And _He
lived His claim_. Power is the one universally recognized touchstone by
which we judge God and man. His power told _who He was_ even more than
His tremendous words did. He was acting naturally. His presence among
them thus natural, true to the power native in Him,--this was the
wooing.

But there was more than power. There was _love_. There was a perfect
blend of the two. With the power went the love. Nay, rather, with the
love went the power. Love was the dominating thing. Jesus was love in
shoes, God in action. Always there was the tenderness, the gentleness,
the patience, the purity, the unflinching ideals, yes, the courage, the
utter fearlessness tempered with a wise prudence. All _these are the
fuller spelling of love_.

Always these went in closest touch with the resisted but resistless
power. These are the two traits of God, two traits that are one. Men
always think most of the power. God Himself always emphasizes most the
love. But true power is simply love in action. The power is the outcome
of love, and under the control of love.

This is the second of John's great impelling pictures. The first shows
us _the Person,_ the Man Jesus, God with us, God making a world, and
then, in homely human garb walking amongst its people, one of
themselves.

This second shows us _the wooing_. This Man, so tender in touch, so
gentle in speech, so thoughtful in action, so pure in life, so unbending
in ideals, so fearless in the thick of opposition, so faithful to the
chosen faithless nation,--this Man Himself is the wooing. His words, His
actions, His power, His persistence, His patience, this also is the
wooing of this great God-Man-Lover. This is God spelling Himself out
into human speech, wooing men out and up and in to Himself.

Jesus Recognised by all the Race.

And it is most striking to sit still and think into how this Lover was
_recognized_ by men of all nations, and how His wooing was _understood_
and yielded to by men of all sorts. The intense Jew, the hal