But there is clear and plain teaching about the great outside majority of past generations and of our own who have never heard.  It was a member of both Jewish nation and Christian Church, whose tongue, touched by the Spirit of God, said, “God is no respecter of persons:  but in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to Him.”  That is a simple standard, yet a searching one.  Anybody, anywhere, with a truly reverential thought upward, and a controlling purpose to be right in his life, will find the door swinging wide.  No other badges or tickets required.  This would include that remarkable woman of India, Chundra Lelah,[3] all those weary years before the simple story of Jesus brought its flood of light and peace, and all of her innumerable class.

Paul puts it as simply and a little more fully in the letter to the Romans, that careful treatise which sums up with marvellous fulness and brevity the gospel he preached to the world.  In chapter two, he says, “to them who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and incorruption (He will give) eternal life.”  Note that in his review thus far he has not yet gotten to Jesus the Saviour.

These people of whom he is now speaking have never heard of Jesus.  They are the great majority.  Mark keenly the simple description of them.  It is a description, not of an achievement, but of a purpose.  The absorbing aim in their lives is seeking upward.  The seeking controls the life.  The mastering spirit of these seekers is patience, steadfastness.  They are seeking for the highest thing.  They are doing what seems to them to be right, while seeking.  They are doing right patiently.

Patience!  What a world of conflicting experiences in a word!  Misunderstandings, breaks, slips, stumblings, failures, falls; but in all, through all, patience, steadfastness.  Taking a fresh hold at every turn.  And the gripping fingers ever learning a new tenacity.  Pulling steadily up a steep mountain side, in a blazing hot sun, blinded by dust, struck by loosened rocks above rolling down, but—­patiently, steadily, with dust-blinded eyes, tugging up.  To such is given the heart’s desire—­eternal life.  Ah!  God judges a man by his direction, by the set of his face.  He may not be far up, but his face is turned up.  His heels show their backs.  His toes point toward the top.  That reveals the purpose, the desire of the man inside.  His choice is to be up.  And it is choice that makes character as well as revealing it.  And the one thing that concerns God is the character as revealed in the purpose.