eeper understanding, that the barriers of thought
and feeling between the two are disappearing, that father and son are
becoming more closely united in mind and heart.

So when we sing, "Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord," we are not
thinking of the nearness of place, but of the nearness of relationship.
It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray, for a more
perfect consciousness of the divine Presence. We need never shout across
the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than
our most secret thoughts.

Why do some persons "find" God in a way that others do not? Why does God
manifest His Presence to some and let multitudes of others struggle
along in the half-light of imperfect Christian experience? Of course the
will of God is the same for all. He has no favorites within His
household. All He has ever done for any of His children He will do for
all of His children. The difference lies not with God but with us.

Pick at random a score of great saints whose lives and testimonies are
widely known. Let them be Bible characters or well known Christians of
post-Biblical times. You will be struck instantly with the fact that
the saints were not alike. Sometimes the unlikenesses were so great as
to be positively glaring. How different for example was Moses from
Isaiah; how different was Elijah from David; how unlike each other were
John and Paul, St. Francis and Luther, Finney and Thomas a Kempis. The
differences are as wide as human life itself: differences of race,
nationality, education, temperament, habit and personal qualities. Yet
they all walked, each in his day, upon a high road of spiritual living
far above the common way.

Their differences must have been incidental and in the eyes of God of no
significance. In some vital quality they must have been alike. What was
it?

I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which they had in common
was _spiritual receptivity_. Something in them was open to heaven,
something which urged them Godward. Without attempting anything like a
profound analysis I shall say simply that they had spiritual awareness
and that they went on to cultivate it until it became the biggest thing
in their lives. They differed from the average person in that when they
felt the inward longing they _did something about it_. They acquired the
lifelong habit of spiritual response. They were not disobedient to the
heavenly vision. As David put it neatly, "Wh