nless night. Man makes theology. And
theology has its place, when it's kept in its place. _God gives us
Jesus_.

I don't know much about botany. My knowledge of astronomy is very
limited. And the more I read of theology, whether Western or Eastern,
Latin Church or Greek, the first Seven Councils or the later ones, the
more I stand perplexed. It's a thing fearsomely and wonderfully
manufactured, this theology. But I frankly confess to a great fondness
for flowers, and for stars, and a love for Jesus that deepens ever more
in reverential awe and in tenderness and grateful devotion. The life was
the light of men. He Himself is all that we have. We go to _things_. We
reckon worth and wealth by things. He gives _Himself_. And He asks, not
_things_, but one's self.

Packing Most in Least.

And John goes quietly on with his great simple story: "_and the light
shineth in the darkness_," John has a way of packing much in little.
Here he packs four thousand years into three English letters. For he has
been back in that creative Genesis week. And now with one long stride he
puts his foot down in the days when Jesus walks among us as a man. Forty
centuries, by the common reckoning, packed into three letters e-t-h.
Rather a skilful bit of packing that. Yet it is not unusual. It is
characteristic both of John and of the One that guides John's pen. When
He is allowed to have free sway the Holy Spirit packs much in little.

That rugged old Hebrew prophet of fire and storm, Elijah, standing in
the grey dawn, in the mouth of an Arabian cave, had the whole of a new
God--a God of tender gentle love--packed into an exquisite sound of
gentle stillness, that smote so subtly on his ear, and completely melted
and changed this man of rock and thunder. It's a new man that turns his
face north again. The new God that had compacted Himself anew inside the
ruggedly faithful old man is revealed in the prophet's successor. This
is the new spirit, so unlike the old Elijah, that comes as a birth-right
heritage upon young Elisha. Great packing work that.

That fine-grained young university fellow on the Damascus road, driving
hard in pursuit of his earnest purpose, had the whole of a God, a new
God to him, packed into a single flash of blinding light out of the
upper blue. He had the whole of a new plan, an utterly changed plan for
his life, packed into a single sentence spoken into his amazed ears as
he lies in the dust.

And if this Holy S