eals and spiritual forces may exist, but men must be
their realizations, their visible hands. God's work waits for you to
put your hand to the sword; you will find His already there.

This helping hand is always unseen; spiritual things are often
apparently unreal. God cannot be reduced to figures nor to material
elements. This hand that works with ours may mean one thing to one and
another to another. What we all need is to simply grasp the great fact
of the spiritual forces that strengthen every good resolve, that give
vigour in every good work, and give victory at last to the right.

THE ONE IN THE MIDST

There are always a thousand blind men to one who can see. All have
eyes, but not all have vision. The things we most need and the things
for which we most long are often nearest to us, while we, with eyes
fast shut, grope our way to the place where we think they ought to be.
The best things are the things we miss. The crowd by the fords of the
Jordan was longing to see the Messiah; yet of them all there was only
one, the son of the desert, who saw that He was actually with them
already. John had eyes that pierced the husk of things. He looked on
this son of the carpenter and a thousand years of prophecy sank into
insignificance beside its fulfillment; the multitude became as nothing
beside the all glorious Son of Man. He alone knew his Lord, because he
alone looked with eyes of love.

John announced the sublime central truth that all the world's great
seers have declared; God is in His world. Man is an animal who seeks
God; he finds Him when his eyes are opened. Some are looking for Him
in the records of His ways with men; many are hoping to see Him in some
other world; a few see Him by their side.

Some, priding themselves on their spiritual vision, and boastingly
describing God as He was or God as He will be, have eyes of stone when
it comes to seeing God as He is. They do not stop to think that we
want a God in the present tense--a God in our homes, on our streets, in
our affairs. And others say, this thing is unthinkable, for, if you
say that this is a spiritual presence, you at once remove the whole
question from touch with real things.

They forget that the most real things lie beyond the senses. Who ever
saw mother-love? Yet who will not believe in it? Ambition, affection,
pity, memory, hope; these are the real things, the lasting things;
these are the spiritual things. No one ever