Levels of Living | Page 6

its supporters have often been faint-hearted,
and yet ultimately it has overcome always. As men have fought on they
have found an unseen hand grasping the sword beside theirs.
We all need this sense of God with us, helping us in our lives. This
gives courage and confidence. It does not mean weak reliance upon
heaven to do things for us; it means entering on the things that look
impossible because we know that, if they are right, every great force in
the universe will coöperate with us.
This is the fine sense in which the human enters into partnership with
the heavenly. This determines whether we may call our work divine or
not. It is to be judged, not by whether it is pleasant or looks respectable,
but by whether it is the work in which we know the Lord of all can lay
His hand to the tool or weapon alongside of our hands.
With a consciousness like this, one attempts anything. The practical
question is not, "Can this be done?" but "Ought this to be done?" "Is it
such a task as will enlist the coöperation of the eternal spirit of truth

and right?" With the cry of Gideon on their lips, men have fared forth
facing fearful odds; their hands have fallen from their swords, but the
unseen hand has carried them on until the cause has won.
The Almighty, who would have love and peace and righteousness to
prevail, needs your hand for His sword; the sword of the Lord is vain
without Gideon. Ideals and spiritual forces may exist, but men must be
their realizations, their visible hands. God's work waits for you to put
your hand to the sword; you will find His already there.
This helping hand is always unseen; spiritual things are often
apparently unreal. God cannot be reduced to figures nor to material
elements. This hand that works with ours may mean one thing to one
and another to another. What we all need is to simply grasp the great
fact of the spiritual forces that strengthen every good resolve, that give
vigour in every good work, and give victory at last to the right.

THE ONE IN THE MIDST
There are always a thousand blind men to one who can see. All have
eyes, but not all have vision. The things we most need and the things
for which we most long are often nearest to us, while we, with eyes fast
shut, grope our way to the place where we think they ought to be. The
best things are the things we miss. The crowd by the fords of the Jordan
was longing to see the Messiah; yet of them all there was only one, the
son of the desert, who saw that He was actually with them already.
John had eyes that pierced the husk of things. He looked on this son of
the carpenter and a thousand years of prophecy sank into insignificance
beside its fulfillment; the multitude became as nothing beside the all
glorious Son of Man. He alone knew his Lord, because he alone looked
with eyes of love.
John announced the sublime central truth that all the world's great seers
have declared; God is in His world. Man is an animal who seeks God;
he finds Him when his eyes are opened. Some are looking for Him in
the records of His ways with men; many are hoping to see Him in some

other world; a few see Him by their side.
Some, priding themselves on their spiritual vision, and boastingly
describing God as He was or God as He will be, have eyes of stone
when it comes to seeing God as He is. They do not stop to think that we
want a God in the present tense--a God in our homes, on our streets, in
our affairs. And others say, this thing is unthinkable, for, if you say that
this is a spiritual presence, you at once remove the whole question from
touch with real things.
They forget that the most real things lie beyond the senses. Who ever
saw mother-love? Yet who will not believe in it? Ambition, affection,
pity, memory, hope; these are the real things, the lasting things; these
are the spiritual things. No one ever saw these things, and yet they can
be seen everywhere; it only needs the vision; we all have seen them at
times.
There are the selfish, gross, and sensual who tell us there is no love in
the world; and there are those to whom every common bush is aflame
with God. So hearts that have forsaken the good see nothing but a
God-forsaken world; and, in this same world, hearts that are lifted up
find Him everywhere, they see Him in