bring a new circulation of blood into
the whole life of the Church.

Have you noticed the sharp contrast that there is gradually growing up
between the way people at home and these foreign peoples are receiving the
Gospel? Out there there is an openness to the truth, an eager willingness
to believe it simply, and to act upon it, that suggests the way they did
in the Book of Acts. In our home-lands of America and Great Britain and
Germany there seems to be either indifference, or an atmosphere of quibble
and criticism. With questions and doubts naturalistic explanations are
sought that do away with much of the simple force of God's truth.

A like difference is showing itself between the results there and here.
Here they are scantier, and gotten with great difficulty; there much
larger, and with greater ease. There the door is wide-open, and people
crowding in; here there is a feeling that the door is closing, surely and
not slowly people turn away elsewhere. There has come to be an unusual
proportion of pickles and salads and other relishes served with every
spreading of the Gospel meal here. There, just plain unbuttered bread is
eagerly and thankfully sought for. They are hungry. And their hunger is a
wide-open door to us. We need the exercise of foreign travel, and a great
deal of it, to bring back our zest.

<u>"Inasmuch."</u>

May I speak very softly of another side of this knocking at our door?
<i>Who</i> is it that is knocking? Aye, <i>Who</i>?

Do you remember Jesus' words in Matthew, chapter twenty-five? He is
speaking of the settling-up time that is to come at the close of things.
And He does something there that is startling. He <i>identifies Himself</i>
with the hungry and cold and poor. That is, He puts Himself in their
place. They are reckoned as though they were He. He says that when they
asked for some food and warm clothes <i>it was really Himself asking for
food and warmth!</i> We have been really dealing with Him when we have met
these needy ones. The one test question He makes for all is this--What did
you do for these hungry people? Because what you did, or didn't do for
them, was done or refused to <i>Me</i>. Jesus comes in the guise of the needy.
Who is it knocking at our door so loudly to-day?

I suppose if you could think of Jesus actually coming to-day to New York,
the human Jesus I mean, coming as a man just as He came to Jerusalem, but
known to us as He is now--I suppose there is har