f a servant of God and does God's will out of obedient
love, he shall then be strong and wise. One great element of his
strength is going to be this: A marvellous revelation that is to come to
him of how all his past has been filled with the power of that spirit
with which he has at last entered into communion, to which he has at
last submitted himself. Man becomes the child of God, becomes the
servant of Jesus Christ, and this marvellous revelation amazes him. He
sees that back through all the years of his most obstinate and careless
life, through all his wilfulness and resistance, through all his
profligacy and black sin, God has been with him all the time, beating
himself upon his life, showing him how He desired to call him to
Himself, and that the final submission does not win God. It simply
submits to the God who has been with the soul all the time. Can there be
anything more winning to the soul than that, anything that brings a
deeper shame to you, than to have it revealed to you, suddenly or
slowly, that from the first day that you came into this world, nay,
before your life was an uttered fact in this world, God has been loving
you, and seeking you, and planning for you, and making every effort that
He could make in consistency with the free will with which He endowed
you from the centre of His own life, that you might become His and
therefore might become truly yourself? Through all the years in which
you were obstinate and rebellious, through all the years in which you
defied Him, nay, through the years in which you denied Him and said that
He did not exist, He was with you all the time. What shall I say to my
friend who is an atheist? Shall I believe that until he comes to a
change of his opinions and recognizes that there is indeed a ruling
love, a great and fatherly God for all the world, that he has nothing to
do with that God? Shall I believe that God has nothing to do with him
until he acknowledges God? God would be no God to me if He were that, if
He left the man absolutely unhelped until the man beat at the doors of
His divine helpfulness and said, "I believe in Thee at last. Now help
me." And to the atheist there appears the light of the God whom he
denies. Into every soul, just so far and just so fast as it is possible
for that soul to receive it, God beats His life and gives His help. That
is what makes a man hopeful of all his fellow-men as he looks around
upon them and sees them in all the conditio