nomena of the outer world, and the impulse to confront these phenomena with eyes of enquiry and wonder.” This impulse of wonder, he continues, becomes " a creative power " in literature and art. When men take great things for granted, their work lacks distinction and freshness. Elevation of thought and style demands the lowly, reverent mind.

This principle is supremely true in religion and character: we suffer when there is no wonder in our hearts. There are some truths which cannot even be seen until we have learnt to take the shoes from off our feet, knowing that the place whereon we stand is holy ground. The Bible is the most wonderful book in the world because its seers and teachers are amazed at the grace of God, finding it almost too good to be true. "Unto me," cried St. Paul, "who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." It is not the holiness of God alone which so impresses the heart, but the spectacle of Infinite holiness crossing the gulf to abide among the outlaws. That He should forgive those who have so greatly sinned might well

amaze the awakened heart, but far more wonderful is the mercy that "lays forgiveness at our feet, and pleads with us to take it." Our familiarity with the messages of grace is a peril: we need to recover the apostolic impulse of wonder. The mind which takes for granted that which "angels desire to look into " condemns itself to dullness and mediocrity in character.

Evangelical wonder is born of the Divine quest for man. We have sometimes spoken as if the search were on our side. "The history of philosophy," wrote George Henry Lewes, "is the history of man's quest for God." We pursue, it would seem, One who eludes our groping thought; we hear the sweep of His garment, but when we go forward He is not there. It is of very deep significance that we have never been able to give up the quest. Emerson tells of two of his friends, who for twenty-five years sought to prove the immortality of the soul. And he adds that the most powerful proof of the doctrine was in the impulse which sustained that prolonged endeavour. One proof that God is seeking man lies in the fact that man is ever seeking God. The pursuer is actually the pursued. "We should

not seek Him," said Pascal, "had we not found Him."

That Divine quest is the constant theme of the Bible. It tells the great story of God's insistent pursuit of the human soul. The Universe, vast as it is, gives no safe hiding-place from Him; it affords no single spot where we may feel secure from His all-searching presence. "Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me." We are like that wanderer of old coming along the trail at the close of day, faint and lonely, who thought he had left his father's God behind him because he had left his father's tent, but discovered, as he lay down to rest upon the hillside, that he was pursued. "Lo, God is here and I knew it not," was his astonished cry. For the shepherd is out after the sheep, and though it seek to escape the inexorable pursuer, he does not give up the quest until he finds it. That, we say again, is the truth which has smitten, with ever deepening wonder, the heralds of the gospel in every age. There is mercy with God that He may be feared." Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Luther, Wesley, Newman, Spurgeon never could become accustomed to this tremendous message

given to them. Their words pulsate with wonder. Amazement only deepens in those great souls as they go out to persuade men to turn and find God -not another, but Himself, in very truth-by their side.

This ceaseless quest is the burden of Francis Thompson's greatest poem-"The Hound of Heaven." The poem is the product of an experience. He had been lost and was found. It is the cry of a penitent and reclaimed soul. He stands overwhelmed by wonder; he cannot take it for granted; he is spellbound in a Universe that was transfigured by the Cross of our Saviour. In the heart of this man there abides the cry which rings to one clear note throughout the ages:

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Amazing love, immense and free,
For, O my God, it found out me."

Thompson could not look upon a sunset without being reminded of the Cross, nor hail the sunrise without seeing the glory of our Lord's resurrection. The "Hound of Heaven" is an epic of the love that would not let him go. He confesses that he had sought to evade the "tremendous

Lover," but found no escape until at last he gave up the attempt and was found, content then, as he had never been content before.

"Every poet," said Thompson in a letter quoted by Mr. Everard Meynell in his biography of the poet, "should be able to give a clear and logical prose résumé of his teaching as terse as a page of scholastic philosophy." Sometimes such might be desirable to readers - his poetry; but we need no prose résumé here. The haunting stanza which with slight variations is five times repeated in "The Hound of Heaven

the message:

"But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat and a Voice beat

More instant than the Feet

sums up

'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.'" Some one is out after the Soul of man! Most of us are made aware of this in one way or another. We go on heedless until something occurs which startles us by a sense of being overlooked. Men behave themselves in different ways when such an impression comes to them, for it is pos