as all our figures are so imperfect, because it seems to be the man all by himself, working by himself, until he shall come forth into the life of God, as if God waited there to receive him when he came forth the freed man, and as if the working of the freedom upon the sinner’s side had not something also of the purpose of God within him.  God is not merely in the sunshine; God is in the cavern of the man’s sin.  God is with the sinner wherever he can be.  There is no soul so black in its sinfulness, so determined in its defiant obstinacy, that God has abandoned his throne room at the centre of the sinner’s life, and every movement is the God movement and every effort is the God force, with which man tries to break forth from his sin and come forth into the full sunlight of a life with God.  Do you not think how full of hope it is?  Do you not see that when this great conception of the universe, which is Christ’s conception, which beamed in every look that He shed upon the world, which was told in every word that He spoke and which was in every movement of His hand—­do you not see how, when this great conception of the universe takes possession of a man, then all his struggle with his sin is changed, it becomes a strong struggle, a glorious struggle.  He hears perpetually the voice of Christ, “Be of good cheer.  I have overcome the world.  You shall overcome it by the same strength which overcame with Me.”

And then another thing.  When a man comes forth into the fulness of that life with God, when at last he has entered God’s service and the obedience to God’s will, and the communion with God’s life, then there comes this wonderful thing, there comes the revelation of the man’s past.  We dare to tell the man that if he enters into the divine life, if he makes himself 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