fted into a
servant of the divine beneficence. And man's wild but imperishable
passion for the unseen has been brought to see its last and best self
in the love of Christ. Wherever we look, this gospel is the master
light of all our seeing; and once more, is it not light from heaven?
We know where to look for the belt of Orion, and clear and grand as
the stars that constitute it are the great saving truths which are set
in the human sky. There is nothing arbitrary in this sublime faith,
nothing that does not rise out of the human order, nothing that is a
mere import from the world of fancy or wild belief. The faith is the
translation of fact into thought and speech. The eyes of Christ pass
over and through the order of the universe, and His vision is our
faith. Man is the interpreter of nature; religion is the interpreter
of man; Christianity is the interpreter of religion; and God the
Father is the interpreter of Christianity.

DAWSON

CHRIST AMONG THE COMMON THINGS OF LIFE

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

William James Dawson, Congregational preacher and evangelist, was born
in Towcester, Northamptonshire, in 1854. He was educated at Kingswood
School, Bath, and Didsbury College, Manchester. He has long been
known as an author of originality and pure literary style. In 1906 he
received the pastorate of Highbury Quadrant Congregational Church,
London, and accepted an invitation to do general evangelistic work
under the auspices of the National Council of the Congregational
churches of the United States. He now resides in this country.

DAWSON

Born in 1854:

CHRIST AMONG THE COMMON THINGS OF LIFE[1]

[Footnote 1: Reprinted by kind permission of Messrs. Fleming H. Revell
& Co., New York.]

_As soon then as they were come to land they saw a fire of coals
there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith unto them, Come
and dine_.--John xxi., 9, 12.

I can not read these words without indulging for a moment in a
reminiscence. Not long ago, in the early morning, while all the world
slept, I stood beside the Sea of Tiberias, just as the morning mist
lifted, and watched a single brown-sailed fishing-boat making for the
shore, and the tired fishermen dragging their net to land. In that
moment it seemed to me as if more than the morning mist lifted--twenty
centuries seemed to melt like mist, and the last chapter of St. John's
gospel seemed to enact itself before my eyes. For so vivid was the
sense of someth