and the joyous life that is outside, who knows that his imprisonment is
not his true condition, and so with every tool that his hands can grasp
and with his bleeding hands themselves beats on the stone, that he may
find his way out. And the glory and the beauty of it is that while he is
beating upon the inside of the wall there is also a noble power praying
upon the outside of that wall, The life to which he ought to come is
striving in its turn, upon its side, to break away the hindrance that is
keeping him from the thing he ought to be, that is keeping him from the
life he ought to live. God, with His sunshine and lightning, with the
great majestic manifestations of Himself, and with all the peaceful
exhibitions of His life, is forever trying, upon His side of the wall,
to break away the great barrier that separates the sinner's life from
Him. Great is the power, great is the courage of the sinner, when
through the thickness of the walls he feels that beating life of God,
when he knows that he is not working alone, when he is sure that God is
wanting him just as truly, far more truly, than he wants God. He bears
himself to a nobler struggle with his enemy and a more determined effort
to break down the resistance that stands between him and the higher
life. Our figure is all imperfect, 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