II. And now pass to +the Divinity of the method.+--"Through Jesus Christ." Man is separated from God. That fact, testified to by broken associations, by alienated affections, by conflicting wills, stands written in the whole history of our race. And equally clear is it to him who reads the Gospels, and enters into sympathy with their wonderful Person, that in Him, in Jesus of Nazareth, appeared the Mediator by whom was to be the Atonement. His was the life and nature which, standing between the Godhood and the manhood, was to bridge the gulf and make the firm, bright road over which blessing and prayer might pass and repass with confident, golden feet for ever. And then the question is--and when we ask it thus it becomes so much more than a dry problem of theology; it is a question for live, anxious men to ask with faces full of eagerness--Out of which nature came that Mediator? Out of which side of the chasm sprang the bridge leaping forth toward the other? Evidently on both sides that bridge is bedded deep and clings with a tenacity which shows how it belongs there. He is both human and Divine. But from which side did the bridge spring? It is the most precious part of our belief that it was with God that the activity began. It is the very soul of the Gospel, as I read it, that the Father's heart, sitting above us in His holiness, yearned for us as we lay down here in our sin. And when there was no man to make an intercession, He sent His Son to tell us of His love, to live with us, to die for us, to lay His life like a strong bridge out from the Divine side of existence, over which we might walk fearfully but safely, but into the Divinity where we belonged. Through Him we have access to the Father. As the end was Divine, so the method is Divine. As it is to God that we come, so it is God who brings us there. I can think nothing else without dishonouring the tireless, quenchless love of God.