ory. "Sed ex amante alio accenditur alius" ("Confessions",
iv. 14, 911). "One loving spirit sets another on fire." Jesus brings
men to the new exploration of God, to the new commitment of
themselves to God, simply by the ordinary mechanism of friendship
and love. This, in plain English, is after all the idea of
Incarnation--friendship and identification. Jesus has a genius for
friendship, a gift for understanding the feelings of men. Look, for
example, at the quick word to Jairus. As soon as the message comes
to him that his daughter is dead, Jesus wheels round on him at once
with a word of courage (Mark 5:36). This quickness in understanding,
in feeling with people, marks him throughout. An instinctive care
for other people's small necessities is a great mark of friendship,
and Jesus has it. We find him saying to his disciples: "Come ye
yourselves apart privately into a desert place, and rest awhile"
(Mark 6:31). What a beautiful suggestion! He himself, it is clear
from the records, felt the need of privacy, of being by oneself, of
quiet; and he took his quiet hours in the open, in the wild, where
there was solitude and Nature, and there he would take his friends.
There were so many coming and going, that they had no leisure to
eat, and Jesus says to them in his friendly way: "Let us get out of
this--away by ourselves, to a quiet place; what you want is rest."
What a beautiful idea!--to go camping out on the hillside, under the
trees, to rest--and with him to share the quiet of the lonely place.
It is not the only time when he offers to give people rest--"Come
unto Me ... and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). How strange,
when one thinks of the restless activity of Christian people to-day,
with typewriters and conventions, and every modern method of
consuming energy and time! How sympathetic he is!

We may notice again his respect for the reserve of other people. On
the whole, how slowly Jesus comes to work with men! He never
"rushes" the human spirit; he respects men's personalities. Men and
women are never pawns with him. He does not think of them in masses.
The masses appeal to him, but that is because he sees the individual
all the time. To one of his disciples he says, "I have prayed for
thee" (Luke 22:32). What a contrast to the conventional "friend of
man" in the abstract! With all that hangs upon him, he has leisure
to pray intensely, for a single man. It gives us an idea of his
gifts in friendship. His fai