And so ends John’s first great paragraph.  It is so tremendous in its simplicity that, Greek-like, men stumble over its simple tremendousness.  Away back in the beginning God revealed Himself in making a home for man, and in bringing the man, made in His own image, to his home.  And then when the damp unwholesome darkness came stealing in swamping the home and man He came Himself, flooding in the soft clear pure light of His presence, to free man from the darkness and woo him out into the light.

Tarshish or Nineveh?

Then John goes on into his second paragraph. “There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John.”  Why?  Because man was in the dark.  He sent a man to help a man.  He used a man to reach a man.  He always does.  Run clear through this old Book of God, and then clear through that other Book of God—­the book of life, and note that this is God’s habit.  He, Himself, uses the path He had made for human feet.  With greatest reverence let it be said that God must use a human pathway for His feet.

Even when He would redeem a world He came, He must needs come, as a Man, one of ourselves.  He touches men through men.  The pathway of His helping feet is always a common human pathway.  And, will you mark keenly that the highest level any life ever reaches, or can reach, is this:  to be a pathway for the feet of a wooing winning God.

And this is still true.  It is meant to be true to-day that there came a man, sent from God, whose name is—­your name.  You put in your own name in that sentence, then you get God’s plan for you.  For as surely as this particular John of the desert and of the plain living, and the burning speech, was sent by God, so surely is every man of us a man sent by God on some particular errand.  And the greatest achievement of life is to find and fit into the plan of God for one’s life.  This is the only great thing one can do.  Anything else is merely labelled “great.”  And that label washes off.  This is the one thing worth while.

The bother is we don’t always get the verbs, the action words, of that sentence straight.  John was a man sent from God.  And he came.  All men are sent But they don’t all come, some go; go their own way.  There was a man sent from God whose name was Jonah.  But he didn’t come.  He went.  He was sent to Nineveh on the extreme east.  He went towards Tarshish on the extreme west; just the opposite direction.  Every man is headed either for Nineveh or Tarshish, God’s way or his own.  Which way are you headed?

Some of us go to Tarshish religiously.  We go our own way, and sing hymns and pray, to make it seem right and keep from hearing the inner voice.  We hold meetings at the boat-wharf, while waiting for the Tarshish ship to lift anchor.  We have services in the steerage and second-class and distribute tracts and New Testaments; but all the time we’re headed for Tarshish; our way, not God’s.  It won’t do simply to do good.  We must do God’s will.  Find that and fit into it.