ideals.  Because of our Christian civilization, behind every morning is the Father, who makes His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, and who sends His rain upon the just and the unjust.  Nature has been lifted 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 something familiar in the scene, so mystic was the hour, that I should scarce have been surprized had I seen a fire of coals burning on the shore, and heard the voice of Jesus inviting these tired fishermen to come and dine.