But this friend I speak of has supposed that, after the first flush of feeling has spent itself—­the way we speak of such things done here, the Master is walking down the golden street one day, arm in arm with Gabriel, talking intently, earnestly.  Gabriel is saying,

“Master, you died for the whole world down there, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“You must have suffered much,” with an earnest look into that great face with its unremovable marks.

“Yes,” again comes the answer in a wondrous voice, very quiet, but strangely full of deepest feeling.

“And do they all know about it?”

“Oh, no!  Only a few in Palestine know about it so far.”

“Well, Master, what’s your plan?  What have you done about telling the world that you died for, that you have died for them?  What’s your plan?”

“Well,” the Master is supposed to answer, “I asked Peter, and James and John, and little Scotch Andrew, and some more of them down there just to make it the business of their lives to tell others, and the others are to tell others, and the others others, and yet others, and still others, until the last man in the farthest circle has heard the story and has felt the thrilling and the thralling power of it.”

And Gabriel knows us folk down here pretty well.  He has had more than one contact with the earth.  He knows the kind of stuff in us.  And he is supposed to answer, with a sort of hesitating reluctance, as though he could see difficulties in the working of the plan, “Yes—­but—­suppose Peter fails.  Suppose after a while John simply does not tell others.  Suppose their descendants, their successors away off in the first edge of the twentieth century, get so busy about things—­some of them proper enough, some may be not quite so proper—­that they do not tell others—­what then?”

And his eyes are big with the intenseness of his thought, for he is thinking of—­the suffering, and he is thinking too of the difference to the man who hasn’t been told—­“what then?”

And back comes that quiet wondrous voice of Jesus, “Gabriel, I haven’t made any other plans—­I’m counting on them.”

The Secret of Winsomeness.

That’s a bit of this friend’s imagination, it’s true.  But—­it’s the whole Gospel story, through and through.  Jesus has made that plan.  He has not made any other plan.  He’s counting on us, each of us, each in his own circle, in his own way, as comes best, most natural to him tactfully, quietly, earnestly—­simply that, but all of that.  And—­if—­we fail—­Him—­let me be saying it very softly so the seriousness of it may get into the inner cockles of our hearts—­if we fail Him, just that far we make Jesus’ dying a failure so far as concerns those whom we touch.

Yes, I know that sounds very serious.  I’d rather not be saying it.  I’m sure, by the Book, it is so.  And so, do you see the genius—­may I use that word very reverently of Him who was a man and far more than man—­the genius of His plan?  He sent down the same Spirit that swayed Him those human years to live in us, and control us, that we might have the same fine passion for men as He, and the same exquisite tact in winning them as He had.