personal intimacy with Jesus Himself. So immense is the bounty of
God to the creature that truly and persistently wills and endeavours
to please Him, so great are the rewards of that creature for its tiny
work that it is as though a child should scratch bare ground with its
little spade and reap a harvest of sweet flowers as magic gifts. In this
way it is that we find actually fulfilled in ourselves the lovely words
of the prophet, "the desert shall blossom like the rose."

The great initial difficulty that surely most of us feel is how to come
into personal contact with this Jesus Christ, and to know which are
the first steps that we should take to bring about this contact. They
are just those same steps that we use to come to a nearer
understanding of and greater intimacy with any persons we are
desirous of making friends with. We commence by thinking about
them, by arranging to spend time in their companionship; and the
more we think about them and the more time we spend with them if
they are very attractive people, the more we feel in sympathy with
them. Form, then, the habit of making for brief instants a mental
picture of the Saviour. Note the exquisite tenderness of His hands,
so instantly ready to save and heal; note the calm strength and the
great love in His countenance, walk beside Him down the street, join
His daily life, learn to become familiar with Him as Jesus--what
would He do, how would He look, what would His thoughts be? To
feel sympathetically towards a person is to take one of the most
important steps towards friendship. How many of us stop in the rush
of our daily amusements, interests, and work to sympathise with
Christ? Most probably, if we think of Christ at all, it is to feel that
He ought to sympathise with us! Now Christ not only sympathises
with but ardently loves us, and our failure to receive the comfort and
help of this love is due to our failure in returning to Him these same
feelings of sympathy and love and friendship. We are not reciprocal,
but perpetually ask and never give.

It is only by returning love to Christ that we are able to receive the
benefits of His love for us. His mighty power and help flows around
but not through us until we place ourselves in individual and direct
contact with Him, until we make that mysterious inward and
spiritual connection with Him which can be achieved only through a
personal love for Him.

Again and again we may cry out, "But how love the inv