nvas right next ours. He insists on being His own true
self in the midst of the unlikeliest surroundings. The glow of His
presence shines out over all the neighbourhood of human tents. There's a
purity of air that stimulates. Men take deep breaths. There's a
fragrance breathing subtly out from His tent that draws and delights.
Men come a-running with childlike eagerness.

Grace Flooding.

And now as Jesus comes quietly down the river road where John's crowd is
gathered, John the witness points his finger tensely out, and eagerly
cries out: _There He is! This is the man I've been telling you about! He
that cometh after me in point of time is become first in relation to me
in point of preeminence: for He was before me both in time and in
preeminence._

And then John adds a tremendous bit. He had just been talking about
Jesus being _full_ of that great combination of grace and truth. Now his
thought runs back to that. Listen: "Of _His fullness_ have we all
received."

There's another translation of this sentence that I have run across
several times. It reads in this way: "Of His _skimpiness_ have we all
received." I never found that in common print; only in the larger print
of men's lives. But in that printing it seems to have run into a large
edition, with very wide circulation. Men don't read this old Book of God
much; less than ever. They get their impression of God wholly from those
who call themselves His followers.

They watch the procession go by. Here they come crippled diseased
maimed weakened in body, piteously pathetically crutching along, singed
and burned with the flames of the same low passion that the onlooking
crowds know so well, struggling, limping, crutching along bodily and in
every other way.

And that's a crowd with very keen logic, those onlookers. It judges God
by those bearing His name, very properly. And it says more or less
_unconsciously_,--"What a poor sort of God He must be those people have.
No doubt He has a great job of management on His hands. There are so
many of them to provide for. And apparently there can't be any
abundance, certainly no overflow, no surplus. He has to piece it out the
best He can to make it go as far as possible."

"I think maybe I needn't be in any hurry to join that crowd, at least
till I have to, along towards the end of things here. There would only
be one more to carry. He has such a crowd now. And the resources are
pretty badly strained, judging b