"But oh, what a God is ours!" cried Ochino, stretching his two arms straight upward. "His judgments are past finding out. How easy it would be to Him to make all straight!--I find myself ready to pray there may be no hell: that it may be a depopulated country--a burnt-out volcano: that all, _all_ may be saved." "Surely you may do that," said Valdés. "The Lord's hand is not shortened, that He cannot save. He stands at the door of our hard hearts and knocks. He cries 'turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?' Could a _man_ say more? Excuse the bathos of the expression. It is man who says 'I will not.'" "But what vindictive expressions--" "Hush, hush, my brother. David's vindictive expressions were those of a Jew, not a Christian: and, after all, what a loving heart he had! If he stormed at his enemies one instant, he forgave them the next. Otherwise, he could never have been the man after God's own heart. His inner being is subjected to a test that none of us could stand--the Psalms are literally his heart-sighings--the thoughts and feelings that chased one another like cloud-shadows over waving corn. Oh! believe me, the fault is not in God, but in ourselves. Since we admit that He is not only round about us but within us, how is it that we have so little perception of Him? Because His grace does not operate in us. And why does not His grace operate in us? Because, in reality, we do not humbly, devoutly, and earnestly desire it.[13] Why do not we both desire it and seek it? Because we do not love God with the whole heart and with all the senses. Why not? Because we do not know Him. Why do not we know Him? Because we do not even know ourselves." [13] Valdés. "Chain of Virtues and Vices." _Vide_ Wiffen's "Alfabeto Christiano." "All this is true and logical enough," said Ochino; "and brings us back to your starting-point, that your first book was your own mind. But that book cannot be read _in the dark_. Nor without the light of the Holy Spirit." "Unquestionably not," said Valdés. "That light enables me to read my own book. It makes plain and full of interest what was arid, forbidding, and deeply disappointing. You know that the Scriptures have helped me to understand my own book. David and St. Paul are nothing to us, in comparison with God and Christ. In the Old Testament we read of a God of vengeance, and a Lord of hosts; for to the Jews he exhibited himself but through a glass darkly. But _we_ know him through Christ, and, in seeing one, we see the other. Oh, then, how is it we are insensible to such love? A man would give the whole world, if he had it, to save the life of an only son: God gave His own Son to save an ungrateful world." "That is a strong figure," said Ochino, with emotion.