may cry
aloud to the whole world that God, the all highest, is in the deepest
abyss {25} within us and is waiting for us to return to Him. Oh, my
God, how does it happen in this poor old world, that Thou art so great
and yet nobody finds Thee, that Thou callest so loudly and nobody hears
Thee, that Thou art so near and nobody feels Thee, that Thou givest
Thyself to everybody and nobody knows Thy name! Men flee from Thee and
say they cannot find Thee; they turn their backs and say they cannot
see Thee; they stop their ears and say they cannot hear Thee!"[27]

This self-giving nature of God is everywhere taken for granted--it is
just _that_ which he feels that Christ has once for all made sun-clear,
and it is because He is essentially self-giving that God pours out His
life and love upon us as He does His sunshine upon the grass and
flowers. "The Word of God is with thee before thou seekest; He gives
before thou hast asked; He opens to thee before thou hast knocked." God
like a Father deals with His wayward children. "Oh, blessed is the
man," he writes, "who in his need finds the love of God and comes to
Him for forgiveness!"[28] No one of us who has been washed from his
sins, he beautifully says, ought to eat a piece of bread without
considering how God loves him and how he ought to love God, who in
Jesus Christ His Son laid aside His right to Divinity that His love
might appear complete.[29] "It has pleased the eternal Love," he
writes, "that that Person in whom Love was shown in the highest degree
should be called the Saviour of His people. Not that it would be
possible for human nature to make anybody saved, but God was so
completely identified in Love with Him that all the Will of God was the
will of this Person, and the sufferings of this Person were and counted
as the sufferings of God Himself."[30]

Christ is for him the complete manifestation of life and the perfect
exhibition or unveiling of God's love, and he who appreciates this
love, feels its attraction, and lives a life which corresponds to his
soul's insight, becomes {26} himself Christlike, forsakes sin and self,
and enters upon a life of salvation. "All who are saved," he says,
"are of one spirit with God, and he who is the foremost in love is the
foremost of those who are saved."[31] "He who gets weary of God has
never found Him," while the person who has found Him in this love-way
will be ready and willing to give up even his own salvation an