And this has been going on for two thousand years.
The story has recently been told of a great thinker lecturing one day before a large audience of medical students—some eighteen hundred men who pressed in to hear him. He took from his desk a letter, and holding it up before him, said something to this effect:
“Gentlemen! I have here a letter from one of your number, in which he tells the story of his life—a record of shame, of sinful indulgence, that makes me shudder even to look at the letter. At the close of this fearful confession he asks, ‘Can your God save such an one as I am?’”
Stopping for a moment and surveying his audience, the speaker said: “When I came to the city this afternoon (it was the city of Edinburgh) there was a beautiful, fleecy cloud spreading itself like a thing of glory in the upper sky, and I said, ‘0 cloud, where do you come from?’ and the cloud answered me and said, ‘come from the slums and the low, vile places of the city. The sun of heaven reached down and lifted me up and transfigured me with his shining.’”
Looking about upon the now deeply impressed throng, the speaker, after a solemn pause, said:
“I do not know whether this young man is here or not, but if he is, I can say to him that my Saviour and my Master, Jesus Christ, he who is our great God and Saviour, he can reach down from the highest heaven to the lowest depths into which a human soul can sink, and can lift you, and lift you up and up, till he shines in you and through you, and transfigures you with the light of his love and glory.”
He can.
He does.
He is doing it now.
And who is he who can do this but the living God alone?