That first spelling is l-o-v-e. God is love. Love is of God. _God is
always controlled by a purpose_ in all His dealings with the race, and
with you and me. There is no chance-happening with Him, no caprice, no
shadow in His path that tells of His being swerved aside, by anything we
do, from a steady purpose.

And that controlling purpose is _always a purpose of love._ It's a
purpose of strong steady pure clinging brooding love. The bother is we
don't know what that word _love_ means; none of us. We know words but
not the real things they stand for. We don't know the real thing of love
because we don't know the real thing of God. If we knew, oh! if we but
knew it--Him--how that simple statement would melt us down, and mellow
us through, and mould us all over anew!

That's the shorter spelling. It is the universal spelling. That love is
being spelled out to all the race by every twinkling star in the upper
blue, every shade of green in the lower brown, by every cooling shading
night, and every fragrantly dewy morning. Every breath of air and bite
of food and draught of water is repeating God's spelling lesson. These
are the pages in God's primer. So we all may learn to spell out God. And
so we get the right spelling of our own lives.

Then there's the other spelling, the five-lettered, J-e-s-u-s. It's the
same thing, only spelled differently; spelled in a yet better way. The
spelling grows bigger to us when Jesus comes. When we know Him it takes
more to spell out and to tell out God's love. God grows larger to our
eyes as He comes walking among us as Jesus. No, He doesn't grow larger.
We simply begin to find out how large He is.

This is the closer, more human spelling. The letters are nearer and seem