Let me speak plainly to you. There may be various reasons why you have failed to detect His presence. Perchance your life has not been so good as even common morality would have made it, and now your heart is a very dreary place, filled with painful memories. Perhaps you are always outside, gadding about, and do not like to dwell alone in your heart and think; and so when Christ knocks and calls He finds empty rooms; or if even you are there you are not there alone, but you have filled its chambers with a noisy, revelling company and din. The call has reached you as a dim, half-heard, strange sound, which moved you half pleasantly and half with pain. You turned in your heart and listened for an instant, but there was something in the sound too painful, and you plunged back again into revelry and mirth. You did not know that it was God, the very heart of God, that had knocked and called. Again, your life may have been very respectable, but very light and frivolous, engrossed in earthly affairs; and Christ has come, and you did not know it. For He comes in such simple, human guise. You remember when He came on earth the poor Jews did not know Him for more than the carpenter's son. He comes like that to you and me. He takes a human hand, and with its fingers knocks, but all you see and recognise is the human touch. You do not see the heart Divine that touches you through it with an appealing thrill. Thank God, there are so many good mothers in this world. Thank God for the little children, and the lads and maidens here, whom a mother's memory follows like a very angel, often after she herself has gone. You remember that Sabbath evening custom when you and the little ones knelt at your mother's knee, and she told you the stories of the Bible; and the last one was always about the gentle Jesus, meek and mild, who came to the world with such a great heart of love, who knew no sin at all, who was so good to women and children and the very worst of broken-hearted sinners, and whom men with hard hearts and cruel hands took and crucified; oh, such a death of pain for _you_! till you could almost see His face on the cross. And your mother's voice had got so low and reverent that it felt as if some one else was in the room, and your young child's heart grew so soft and loving to that Christ that died for you. Yes, He was there. Did you take Him quite inside? Or if you took Him in for a little while did you let Him go again, when your heart grew colder? Oh, young men and maidens who had a mother like that, remember her, and take that Christ into your hearts!