e where the sap runs up to the sun that makes the tree alive or
dead." However you phrase it in the clearer light of this twentieth
century of ours, guard with all diligence those lines of communication
between your own inner life and the life of God. Maintain within
yourself that faith and hope and love which will bring to you your own
full measure of strength and joy.

The dull, sad picture of this defeated man is not wholly unrelieved by
any brighter touch. When he was shorn of his strength, robbed of his
honour, stained in the quality of his manhood, we read, "Howbeit the
hair of his head began to grow again after he was shorn."

It was only a gleam of hope, but it was a gleam. It was a far-off
promise of that divine redemptive process which has become the basis of
our trust. His claim upon the divine favour and his hold upon the
sources of strength were not utterly forfeited by his acts of
evil-doing. His hair began to grow again and a hope of moral recovery
was begotten in his heart. "If we say we have no sin we deceive
ourselves; but if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to
forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Let me close with this plain, straight word of appeal as strong as I
can make it! You need God in your life. You need Him not as a
philosophical belief touching the origin and ground of all finite
existence; not as a mere dogma to be written at the head of your
Confession of Faith; not as a name to be introduced into some liturgy
which you may occasionally employ. You need God as a present, personal
and profound experience. To know Him is to live, and to live well.

It was Phillips Brooks who said once to an audience of Harvard men,
"Here is the last great certainty, be sure of God! By simple, loving
worship, by continual obedience, by keeping yourself pure even as He is
pure, creep close to Him, keep close to Him, and in the end nothing can
overthrow you."

III

The Young Man Who Became King

In some wise way when the door of opportunity opens upon a trying
situation there comes forth a man of sufficient size to perform the
task. When the time is ripe for the Protestant Reformation Martin
Luther is ready and walks in. When the day arrives for Napoleon
Bonaparte to be sent to St. Helena and the peace of Europe restored,
the Duke of Wellington, representing British tenacity, is ready. When
the hour has struck for American slavery to be destroyed by wo