They perceived that man, unaided, cannot leap it at
a stride. We proceed, driven by the facts of life, to the point where
the soul looks up to the Eternal and confesses the kinship, and knows
that only in His light shall it see light, and that it only shall be
satisfied when it awakes in His likeness. But how shall the connection
be made? What shall enable us to do that mystic thing, come back
to God? We have frightful handicaps in the attempt. How shall the
distrust that sin creates, the hardness that sin forms, the despair
and helplessness that sin induces, the dreadful indifference which
is its expression,--how shall they be removed? How shall the unfaith
which the mystery, the suffering, the evil of the world induce be
overcome? Being a sinner I do not dare, and being ignorant I do not
believe, to come. God is there and God wants us; like as a father
pitieth his children so He pitieth us. He knoweth our frame, He
remembereth that we are dust. We know that is true; again we do not
know it is true. All the sin that is in us and all which that sin
has done to us insists and insists that it is not true. And the mind
wonders--and wonders. What shall break that distrust; and melt away
the hardness so that we have an open mind; and send hope into despair,
hope with its accompanying confidence to act; change unfaith to
belief, until, in having faith, we thereby have that which faith
believes in? How amazing is life! We look out into the heavenly
country, we long to walk therein, we have so little power to stir hand
or foot to gain our entrance.
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