house child, without initiative, without power of decision, without self-reliance-a dwarfed and stunted personality.

If this is true in the case of a human personality pressing down too heavily on another human personality, the result of a complete and perfect divine personality pressing with full power on a human being would be a depersonalized being. If God should press himself upon us, we would of necessity lose all our self-reliance, self-direction, initiative; we would be robbed of the very conditions which make it possible for us to develop our mental attributes.

It is one of the marks of God's concern and care for me that he does thus respect my personality, that he does not force me to choose the right. He does not force me to follow him. He does not even force me to know him. This is most remarkable in the life of Jesus Christ. He would not work miracles with the purpose of forcing men to believe in him. He only worked such miracles where they would help the growth of a struggling faith. This, it seems to me, is the very heart of the temptations of Christ. Should he cast himself down from the tower, or assume rulership of the world, and thereby make such a startling display of his power as literally to force men to believe in him? He deliberately turned away from any such procedure, for by forcing faith he would have destroyed the personal lives for whom he had come into the world.

There are some things which even God cannot do, if he is to remain righteously self-consistent-that is, if he is to remain God. One is, he cannot force another personality, however weak, for to force another is immoral, and God cannot lend himself to immorality.

Who speaks of man, then, must not sever
Man's very elements from man,

Saying, "But all is God's"-whose plan
Was to create man and then leave him
Able, his own word saith, to grieve him,
But able to glorify him too,

As a mere machine could never do,

That prayed or praised, all unaware

Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer,

Made perfect as a thing of course.

-Browning's "Christmas Eve.”

STUDY IX. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN

FAITH.

"God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son." (Heb. i. 1, 2.)

"The lion hath roared; who will not fear? The Lord Jehovah hath spoken; who can but prophesy ?" (Amos iii. 8.)

PART 5. CAN GOD SPEAK TO MEN?

AT the University of North Carolina a senior came for an interview. He said he had no trouble to believe in the existence of a personal God, but could not understand how that God could speak to men; in short, he could not believe the Bible was a real revelation to men. He was a good student, a worker in the Young Men's Christian Association, a member of the Church, and evidently honest. But he was greatly troubled, for if God could not speak to men in the past, he cannot speak to us now, and we have no way of knowing his will. What could be said to him?

First of all, it was necessary to show him that we do not refer to oral words when we speak of God talking to man. There are a great many ways of communication besides through written or oral words. In fact, words are, after all, the very weakest of expression. I may protest my love for you, and yet my attitude and my actions may deny my words. I speak with my whole personality, not with my lips alone. Whatever conveys to you the impression of my soul is genuine speech, and often these impressions are too subtle for words

"For words, like nature, half reveal

And half conceal the soul within."

Then I went on to show him there was no impossibility in the thought of God's speaking to me. This is becoming more and more clear in an age when we are moving out into the realm of new mental laws. We are getting so we are ready to believe that almost anything is possible in the field of mental communication, and our credulity is well founded. Psychology is making absolutely clear to us that one personality may in a measure communicate with another personality without ever saying an audible word, provided the two are rightly related to each other. This being true, there can be no possible barrier to divide the personal God from the personal man.

It would be strange if I, a limited personality, can speak to you, and yet God, an infinite and perfect personality, cannot speak to you. Not only so, but if God is a person interested in his children, it would be very strange if he did not speak to them. This we should certainly expect of him, for, as Dr. Illingworth has pointed out, "Self-communication is of the essence of personality."

The proof that this is possible is just the fact itself that he has spoken to men. Men in all times have been convinced that communion with God is one of the positive realities of life. They are just as sure of this reality as of any other reality of experience. Since there is no inherent impossibility in the thing itself, we must accept their testimony as true, for they have been experimenters in the realm of spirit. The company is large which bears testimony to a common experience, and they are competent witnesses. This, we saw in a former study, is the test of reality.

STUDY IX. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN

FAITH.

“He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him." (John xiv. 21.)

"And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Gen. i. 27-28.)

PART 6. WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS OF RECEIVING GOD'S MESSAGE?

BUT my student friend was not satisfied. If God could speak to men, why did he not speak to all men alike? Why had God not spoken to him, since he wanted to know the truth? It was necessary to make clear to him the conditions on which we can hear this voice. I tried to show him there are certain conditions the fulfillment of which alone will make it possible for me and my friend to understand each other.

In the first place, there must be that kind and degree of affinity which makes mutual self-revelation possible. First, this affinity must be moral. If my companion is pure in soul but I am leprous, there can be no mutual self-revelation, for there is too little affinity. The best that can be done will be to make me see the long distance between us and perhaps start me back toward him. Thus we at once see that the second condition of revelation is penitence, or humility-willingness to see the good in another and to accept it.

Now this mutual revelation will be a growing quantity. As I become more like you, you are able to show me more of your life, which in turn accelerates my growth of sympathy

with you and also enables me to open my heart to you. So day by day as we grow toward each other our trust in each other increases, and consequently we are able the more fully to open our hearts one to the other.

This, then, is the condition of coming to hear the voice of God. First, there must be a desire to be like God in character. "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." Then there must be that trust which opens its heart to the other. Any man who comes to God with a heart yearning, who in humility attempts to find the reality of God, and who trusts God in increasing fashion, will soon find himself conscious of the impressions which God is making on his soul. If we do not hear God speak it is because we have not so adjusted ourselves to him that he can speak to us.