s to his companion, "Excuse me, please, I have to
go down _this_ way." And the "have-to" is the have-to of an intense
desire to get off alone. And as he goes down the side street he's
talking, but--to himself. Listen to him: "I'm not the man I ought to be,
I wonder if Jesus is really like he said. I wonder if the thing's really
so. I believe--yes, I really think I'll risk it. My life isn't like it
should be. I'll risk trying this Jesus-way. I'll do it."

The man's clean forgotten the speaker. Oh, yes, he remembers the tone of
the voice, and the look of the face, but indistinctly, far away. He's
face-to-face with Jesus! And the forgotten speaker is the finest
evidence of the faithfulness of his speaking. He is holding up the
light. And men run into the light. They've clean forgot the little tin
candlestick, they are so taken up with the light it holds.

The One Thing to Aim At.

And John keeps driving in on the point in his mind: "_that all might
believe through Him_"; that they might listen, stop to think, agree as
to the thing being believable, then trust it; then trust _Him_, the
Light, risk something, risk, _themselves_ to _Him_, then love, love with
a passionate devotion. This was John's objective. It was the bull's-eye
of his target never out of his keen Spirit-opened eye. Nothing else
figured in.

This is _the_ thing in all our living and serving and doing and giving,
_that men may know Jesus_ to the trusting, risking, loving point, the
glad point. Everything that we can bring of gold and learning and labour
and skill is precious, it is as purest gold, _if_ it lead men into
heart-touch with Jesus. And it clean misses the mark if it does less.

Who would be content to give a Belgian or Polish starveling a bare bit
of bread, and a lonely stick of wood, and a rag of cloth. Bite and stick
and cloth are good, but it's a _meal_ and a _fire_, and some _clothing_,
the man wants. And you have both ready at hand. _Things_ are good,
provided by money and skill and research and painstaking efforts. They
_do_ good. But it's Jesus men need. It's the warm touch that lets _Him_
fully in with all of His human sympathy and all of His God-power, that's
what they need.

Given the sun and quickly come warmth and food and shelter, health and
vigour and increase of life. Given Jesus, and the warm touch with Him,
in His simple fullness, just as He is, and surely and not slowly, there
come flooding in all the rest of an abunda