Men are indispensable to God to put meaning into the words in which He tries to tell His message to men. Words have no meaning of their own. Words mean only as much as one man puts into them, or another man takes out of them. The meaning of the word does not come from the word; it comes from some life in which the word gets incarnated, or from some other life which interprets the word. What would the word “friend” signify to a man who had never had one? What does “tenderness” mean to one who has never seen a mother and her child? Or what is “patriotism” to one who has never seen or felt the contagion? You remember what the eunuch said when Philip met him in the chariot reading the prophet Esaias. “Understandest thou what thou readest?” Philip asked. And he replied, “How can I, except some man should guide me?” Things mean nothing to men until they are shown to them. Men go to China or Japan and preach the Gospel. How is it done? Why, they take words that have old meanings and fill them with new and different meanings by living new ideas in deeds before the people. In our colleges this year what meaning will honour, truth and friendship have, except as these words derive their meaning from the object lessons in some men’s lives? There are places where honour means dishonour; where purity means impurity; where truth means falsehood. These noble words are confused with their very opposites because no man has incarnated their right meaning in his life. That was one reason why the incarnation was necessary nineteen hundred years ago. There was no adequate religious or spiritual vocabulary and never could have been otherwise. If God had not come in the flesh, men would not have had the ideas that we use to describe God’s coming in the flesh. To-day, as then, God is dependent upon men in whom He can put meaning into His message to the world. Men are indispensable in enabling God to get His other men. He gives men guidance for their lives. But how? I appeal to your own hearts. How do we get the guidance of our lives? There are many who are sure of having divine guidance in their lives, surer of that than they are of any material thing, and yet, as we look back upon this supernatural guidance, we realize that it has all been mediated through men. We can name man after man who did for our lives, in smaller measure, just what that man of Macedonia did for Paul. We get our guidance through men. Saint Paul got his through a man. Through what man was it? Sir William Ramsay has no doubt whatever that the man whom Saint Paul saw in his dreams was none other than his friend Luke. A real man and a friend, and no ghost figure, was the man of Macedonia through whom God gave Paul his great missionary call.