's an inner hesitancy in saying
this, and in hearing it. We feel it can hardly be so, even though our
inner hearts would wish it were so.

We know that we men hunger for the human touch, the strongest of us. And
in our hour of sore need we know that our inner hearts look up, and wish
we could have a really close touch with God. Well, this is a bit of the
image of God in us. We were made so, like Himself. In seeing ourselves
here, we are getting a closer look at the heart of God. He longs for the
human touch. When He made us He breathed into our nostrils the breath of
His own life. And this is not simply a bit of the first Genesis chapter.
It is a bit of every human life. There's the breath of God in every new
life born into the world. He gives a bit of Himself. We are not complete
creatively until part of Himself has come to be part of us.

And Jesus' coming was but the same thing put in yet more intense, close,
appealing shape to us. He came to get us in touch again after the break
of sin. He gave His blood that we might have life again after the
sin-break had broken off our life, and commenced to dry it up. This was an
even closer touch. The breath of God came in Eden to breathe in our lungs.
The blood of His Son came on Calvary to give life-action to our hearts.
Could there be anything to make clearer His hunger for the human touch?

The Holy Spirit's presence spells out the same thing once more. There has
been every sort of thing to induce Him to go away. He has been ignored,
left out of all reckoning, and talked against. Yet with a patience beyond
what that word means to us, He has remained creatively in every man as the
very breath of his life. And He comes and remains the very breath of the
spirit life in those who yield to His pleading call.

Jesus was God coming after us. We had gone away. He came to woo us back
into close touch again. He came to the nation of Israel, that through it
He might reach out to all men. When He comes again it will be again to use
Israel as His messenger, while He Himself will be present on the earth in
a new way to woo men to Himself. When that nation's leaders rejected
John's announcement, and so rejected our Lord Jesus, He began to appeal to
individual men, while waiting for the nation. And the work with
individuals was also His call to the nation.

So the chief thing He did was to call men. His presence was a call, and
the crowds flocked to Him wherever He went. His life of pur