be a hand put out, gripping the other hard. And
we'll look into each other's eyes with our eyes big. And we'll say with
breaking voices, "How _patient_ God was with us down there on the earth,
down there in London and New York."

In Him was life. Out of His hand and heart is coming to us all the time
all we are and all we have. We may leave God practically out. So many of
us do. But He never leaves us out. The creating, sustaining touch of His
Hand is ever upon each of us, upon all the world.

Though He cannot do all for us He would except as we gladly come and let
Him. What He is giving us is so _much_. It's our _all_. Yet it is the
smaller part. There's the fuller part. This is the whole drive of John's
story, this fuller part. Out of Him Jesus, into us will come the newer,
the better, the abundant quality of life, if He may have His way.

And John adds,--"_and the life was the light of men."_ He was what we
_have_. He gives Himself; not things, but a person. With God everything
is _personal_. We men go to the impersonal so much, or we try to. We do
our best at it. We have a great genius for organization, especially in
this western half of the earth.

As I came back from a four years' absence from my own country, I was
instantly conscious of a change. Either my ears were changed or things
about me were. I think likely both. But the wheels were going faster
than ever. There were more wheels, and their whir seemed never out of
ear-shot. Commercial wheels, and educational, philanthropic and
religious, political and humanitarian, thicker and faster than ever,
driving all day, and with almost no night there.

And the whole attempt is to make the machine do the thing with as little
dependence as possible on the human element, even though the human
element was never emphasized more. Contradictory? Yet there it is. We
men go to the _im_personal. Yet deep down in our hearts we hunger for
the human touch, the warm personal touch. This after all is _the_ thing.
We all feel that. Yet the whole crowding of life's action is to crowd it
out.

But with God everything is personal. The life is the light of men. What
He is in Himself--that is what He gives. And this is all the light and
life we ever have. Men make botany. God makes flowers breathing their
freshening fragrance noiselessly up into your face. Man makes astronomy.
God makes the stars, shaking their firelight out of the blue down into
your wondering eyes on a clear moo