ather's
presence. This was according to the original plan. It is God's presence
recognized that hallows what is common. It is the absence of His presence,
that is, the leaving of Him out, that makes common things common; that is,
it makes the familiar thing and round _seem_ and _feel_ common. It's the
unhallowed and unhallowing touch of the selfish, of sin, that makes things
seem common, in the sense of not being holy and sweet and pure and
refreshing. Sin makes things grow stale to you. Selfishness affects your
eye, the way things look to you. God's presence recognized keeps things
fresh. His touch upon us, ever afresh, makes us fresh. Everything we touch
and see is touched by a God-freshened hand, and seen through a
God-freshened eye.

Now Jesus lived this commonplace round of life, and lived it under the
ever-freshening touch of His Father's presence. It isn't the thing you do,
nor the things that surround you, that make your life, but the spirit that
breathes out of you in the midst of the things. It's the _you_ in you that
makes the life, regardless of surroundings. The outer things are the
accidents, you, the spirit that breathes out of you,--this is the real
thing.

Jesus _lived_ it. That is the tremendous fact that Nazareth stands for.
He lived what He taught, and He lived it first, and He lived it far more
deeply and really than it could be taught to others. This was the basis of
those few service years. Nazareth lies under the Galilean ministry. There
were thirty years under the three-and-a-half-years. And the thirty years
crop up into and out of the three-and-a-half. The life lived was the great
fact at work, as the Man went about doing good. The hidden life of
Nazareth lies open in the Galilean ministry.

When you are reading the wonderful works among the needy throngs, you are
reading the biography of the Nazareth years, in their outer reach. The
life you live is the thing that tells! This is the meaning of the thirty
hidden years. The Father said, "My Son shall spend most of His years down
there _living_, just living a true, simple Eden life; living with Me in
the midst of home and carpenter shop and village." This is what the world
needs so much to be taught, how to live. And the teaching must be by
living, teaching by action. The message must be lived.

If we men might live Jesus! That's what the world needs. At one of the
smaller meetings of the Edinburgh Conference, in 1910, a Christian
gentleman f