conventionalize His sayings; that we blunt the sharpness of His
precepts, and shirk the tremendous sternness of His demands?

And does His teaching about GOD fare any better? GOD was to Jesus
Christ the one Reality that mattered; is that in any serious sense
true of us? GOD, He taught, cares for the sparrows, numbers the hairs
of our heads, sees in secret, and reads our inmost hearts. GOD knows
all about us, loves us individually, thinks out our life in all its
relations, and makes provision accordingly. There is nothing which He
cannot or will not do for His children.

He is near and not far off: He is also on the throne of all things--
the Universe is in our Father's hand, and His will directs it. "O ye
of little faith, wherefore did ye doubt?" Fear, on the ground that
things are stormy, is a thing Christ simply cannot understand.

GOD, moreover, is loving and generous, royal and bounteous: forgiving
sinners: sending His rain with Divine impartiality upon the just and
the unjust alike. "His flowers are just as beautiful in the bad man's
garden." He loves even His enemies, for He is equally the Father of
all.

And man is made for GOD, and belongs to GOD. GOD and man need one
another: all that is requisite is that they should find one another:
and that is the Good News. The discovery of GOD is the Pearl of great
price, a Treasure worth the sacrifice of everything else: the
experience of a life-time, and a life-time's acquisitions, apart from
GOD, are not worth anything at all.

We who call ourselves Christians, do we seriously believe these