The initiative of salvation is wholly from God, when our cry is answered in His exceeding love. These chains of sin are not His will; mankind forged them for themselves in the beginning; we forge them anew every day, each in the workshop of his own life. But God's part in redemption is one of full and free mercy. "Why will ye die, ye house of Israel," cries the prophet in God's name, "seeing that I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God?" Such was the pleading even of the Old Testament, but how much more of the New! What is the picture which the Gospel reveals, but the picture of God in Christ "reconciling the world"—the estranged and bewildered world—"to Himself," striking off its chains at once, or bidding them gradually grow thin and fall away.

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