en thou saidst, Seek ye my
face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek."

As with everything good in human life, back of this receptivity is God.
The sovereignty of God is here, and is felt even by those who have not
placed particular stress upon it theologically. The pious Michael Angelo
confessed this in a sonnet:

My unassisted heart is barren clay,
That of its native self can nothing feed:
Of good and pious works Thou art the seed,
That quickens only where Thou sayest it may:
Unless Thou show to us Thine own true way
No man can find it: Father! Thou must lead.

These words will repay study as the deep and serious testimony of a
great Christian.

Important as it is that we recognize God working in us, I would yet warn
against a too-great preoccupation with the thought. It is a sure road to
sterile passivity. God will not hold us responsible to understand the
mysteries of election, predestination and the divine sovereignty. The
best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to
God and in deepest reverence say, "O Lord, Thou knowest." Those things
belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God's omniscience. Prying
into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints.

Receptivity is not a single thing; it is a compound rather, a blending
of several elements within the soul. It is an affinity for, a bent
toward, a sympathetic response to, a desire to have. From this it may be
gathered that it can be present in degrees, that we may have little or
more or less, depending upon the individual. It may be increased by
exercise or destroyed by neglect. It is not a sovereign and irresistible
force which comes upon us as a seizure from above. It is a gift of God,
indeed, but one which must be recognized and cultivated as any other
gift if it is to realize the purpose for which it was given.

Failure to see this is the cause of a very serious breakdown in modern
evangelicalism. The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the
saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is
too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic
action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and
automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of
reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods
to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions
and rush aw