“After all,” thought he, “be a man credulous or doubting, absolute knowledge waits upon revelation—­upon demonstration.”

“O God,” he cried finally, “if Thou art, and if Jesus Christ is, and is such an One as described here, give me evidence!  Let me know Him and Thee.”

He lifted his book again, and this time he read: 

“If any man is willing to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself.”

If a voice had spoken aloud the words it would not have conveyed the message more directly to his heart.  He paused, as before a pivotal moment of destiny.

“‘Willing to do His will!’”

His face whitened.  The agony of the night before was upon him.  The way of the cross—­the picture of the Man who like no other had done the will of God, rose before him and demanded all things.

As drowning men are said to have pass in review the events of a lifetime before them, so in a moment’s time the strategic elements of his life appeared before him, and the finger of God pressed the most sensitive points in his nature.  He pointed to the counting room of the keen business man, and Hubert saw himself poor for the Kingdom of God’s sake.  He pointed to the beautiful home and its inmates, and he saw himself homeless, having “hated” father and mother and sister—­ah, sharpest pang of all!—­for the sake of discipleship to the sorrowful Son of Man.  An invisible attraction drew him after Him, and with ashen lips but with fixed heart Hubert Gray took up his cross.

“I am willing to do Thy will,” he said.  “Only let me know the teaching.”

The immediate result of Hubert’s work of faith cannot be written.  It is incommunicable.  One may point to after effects in a life transformed, but of that supernatural witness which comes to men’s souls, stamping the words of God as very truth indeed, no description can be given.  As jealously guarded as the crown jewels in the Tower of London is the secret of the Lord which is revealed or hidden at His will.  To the foolish one who “in his heart” says, “There is no God,” no glorious revelation comes; and often even the patent fact of His divine creatorship is not observed.  But, given a hungry soul, he shall be filled with good things.  And the Spirit waits to charge with electric certainty the teaching of God’s truth to the man who in meekness adjusts himself to it.

Cold and colorless glows the transparent prism in the shadow.  But let the sun shine through it, and lo! it is alive with all the colors of glory and beauty.  So the sunlight shone in the laboratory of Hubert Gray that night and lit up with many rays of refracted glory the doctrine of Jesus Christ.  Light focused itself upon the Person, and Hubert saw, as years of painful study would not have taught him without that light, the mysterious merging of his own identity with His; saw mistily, what afterward he should discern more clearly, his own worthless, sinful life vanished in the dying of the One “lifted up”; saw radiantly his own triumph and everlasting life together with the living Christ.  To the secret abode where lives are “hid with Christ in God,” he came and saw.  The unspeakable gladness of the revelation turned the rugged cross into a crown of glory.