One day I looked through that crack and caught a glimpse of His face looking through full in my own, with those eyes of His.  And at first I wanted to take the door clear off of its hinges and stand it outside against the bricks, and leave the whole door-space wide for Him.

But I’ve learned better.  No man wants to leave the doorway of his life unguarded.  He must keep the strong hand of his controlling purpose on the knob of the front door of his life.  There are others than He, evil ones, cunningly subtle ones, standing just at the corner watching for such an opportunity.  And they step quickly slyly in under your untaught unsuspicious eyes, and get things badly tangled in your life.  There’s a better, a stronger way.

Here’s the personal translation that I try now, by His help, to work out into living words, the language of life.  He comes to His own, and His own opens the door wide, and holds it wide open, that He may come in all the way, and cleanse, and change, readjust, and then shape over on the shape of His own presence.

But every one must work out his own translation of that; and every one does.  And the crowd reads—­not this printed version.  It reads this other translation, the one nearest, in such big print, the one our lives work out daily.  That’s the translation they prefer.  And that’s the translation they’re being influenced by, and influenced by tremendously.

He Came to His Own.

In certain circles in England, they tell of a certain physician years ago.  He came of a very humble family.  His father was a gardener on a gentleman’s estate.  And the father died.  And the mother wasn’t able to pay her son’s schooling.  But a storekeeper in the village liked this little bright boy and sent him to school.  And he went on through the higher schooling, became a physician, and began his practice in London.  He became skilled, and then famous, and then wealthy.

He remembered his dear old mother, of course.  He sent her money, and fabrics for dresses, and wrote her.  But for a long time, in the busy absorption of his life, he had not been to see her.  And the dear old mother in the little cottage in the country lived in the sweet consciousness that her son was a great physician up in the great London.  He was her chief topic of conversation.  When the neighbours were in she would always talk of her son, her Laddie, she called him.

“He’s so good to me, my Laddie is.  He sends me money.  I put it in the bank.  He sends me cloth for dresses; it’s quite too good for a plain body like me.  And he writes me letters, such good letters, wonderful letters.  But he’s so busy up there, that he hasn’t been to see me for a long time now.  You know he’s a great doctor now, and he has great skill, and there are so many needing him.  And he’s no time at all, even for himself, I expect.  But”—­she would always finish her talk as they sat over the tea by saying, half to herself, really more to herself than to the little group, with a half-repressed longing sigh, “but, I wish, I just wish I could see my Laddie.”