God has written over the whole course of history the meaning of the Cross in this way, that the only answer that He can give to sin, to evil, to disobedience, and to all the fruit and results thereof, is travail, despair and death. And yet, withal, He is the God of Hope. He is saying that travail, passion, despair and death are the only way of hope. That is written in the whole history of God's dealings with men. Ever since Adam's sin, and (in him) the race's fall, God has had to work on the basis of the Cross of Christ. The Cross has been implicit in all God's dealings with men, and not only in general, but with His own people in particular. ...The Cross has always been God's way of salvation, God's remedy. It is a very drastic, a very terrible remedy, but it is God's remedy. And if it is an effective remedy, then it produces hope; it is something with hope - new hope - as its issue.
