earts on them. First we must desire;
and after the desire, steady and persistent, God will give. And we
say, "But I have desired and I do desire, and God does not give.
Why is this?" There are two reasons for it. For one--are these
marvellous things to be given because of one cry; for one petulant
demand; for a few tears, mostly of self-pity, shed in an hour when
the world fails to satisfy us, when a friend has disappointed us, when
our plans are spoiled, when we are sick or lonely? These are the
occasions on which we mostly find time to think of what we call a
better world, and of the consolations of God.

But let anyone have all that he can fancy, be carried high upon the
flood-tide of prosperity, ambition, and success, and how much time
will he or she give to Almighty God?--not two moments during the
day. Yet the Maker of all things is to bestow His unspeakable riches
upon us in return for two moments of our thought or love! Does a
man acquire great worldly wealth, or fame, in return for two
moments of endeavour?

"Ah," some of us may cry, "but it is more than two moments that I
give Him; I give Him hours, and yet I cannot find Him." If that is
really so, then the second reason is the one which would explain
why He has not been found. A great wall divides us from the
consciousness of the Presence of God. In this wall there is one Door,
and one only, Jesus Christ. We have not found God because we have
not found Him first as Jesus Christ in our own heart. Now whether
we take our heart to church, whether we take it to our daily work, or
whether we take it to our amusements, we shall not find Jesus in any
one place more than another if He is not already in our hearts to
begin with. How shall I commence to love a Being whom I have
never seen? By thinking about Him; by thinking about Him very
persistently; by comparing the world and its friendships and its loves
and its deceits and its secret enviousnesses with all that we know of
the lovely ways of gentle Jesus. If we do this consistently, it is
impossible not to find Him more lovable than any other person that
we know. The more lovable we find Him the more we think about
Him, by so much the more we find ourselves beginning to love Him,
and once we have learnt to hold Him very warmly and tenderly in
our heart, then we are well in the way to find the Christ and
afterwards that divine garden of the soul in which God seems to slip
His hand under our restless anxious heart