influence of these spirits
without ever knowing them. I lived for twelve years in a community to
which in its early days a young minister had come, and where for forty
years he stood as the central influence in the town's life. He brought
it up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. As was said of Joseph
in Potiphar's prison, "Whatsoever they did there, he was the doer of
it." The height of his mind, the unselfishness of his spirit, the
liberality of his thought, made all the people gladly acclaim him as
the foremost citizen of the town. There is a quality in the town's
life yet which never would have been there had it not been for him.
Sometimes yet his spirit must brood above that community which for
forty years he cherished and must say to people whom he never knew, but
who are being blessed by the benedictory influence of his life, what
Jehovah said to Cyrus the Persian, "I girded thee, though thou hast not
known me."

So, from multitudinous sources services flow in upon us that we do not
recognize. It should be impossible then to think that God never
touches men until men welcome him. Some people seem to suppose that
God ministers to men, saves them, transforms them, raises them up and
liberates them only when they confessedly receive him. That cannot be
true of the God of the New Testament. He is too magnanimous for that.
Jesus says a man is unworthy of his discipleship when he serves only
the friends who are responsive, that we must serve the hostile and
ungrateful, too. Can it be that God is less good than Jesus said we
ought to be? We in the churches have drawn our little lines too tight.
We have been tempted to divide mankind into two classes, the white and
the black: in the Church the white, the saved, who recognize God;
outside, the black, the unsaved, the ungodly who do not recognize him.
By that division we sometimes seem to imply that those outside the
Church are outside the reach of God's transforming grace and power. We
are tempted to look for God's activity chiefly, if not altogether,
inside the organization that avows him. But that cannot be true. He
comes in like the sun through every chink and crevice where he can find
a way of entrance. He does not wait to be welcomed. He does not
insist on being consciously recognized before he enters a man's life.
Rather, through any door or window left unwittingly ajar where he may
steal in, even though unobserved, to lift and liberate a life