Fortunately this higher demand upon God is fully met in the religion of Jesus. For while our Father is a wonder-worker and a world builder, at the same time He has myriads of human bodies through which He can live a thoroughly social life. He is the most social Being in the universe; His desire and capacity for social relations are unlimited. He does not willingly leave one individual outside the circle of His friends. All His work in nature is for the purpose of providing instruments and conditions for a family of free children, among whom He may live as the free and adorable Father. It is no wonder that men cease to pray, when in their thought God is divorced from everything individual and social. When men conceive of God as the mere operator of the cosmos, their highest concern is to keep out of the way of the machine. It never occurs to such men that God is able to treat them as sons, after the most personal and human manner. It is only in the laws of nature that His actions are mechanically uniform. In social relations His moods and actions change to suit the feelings and conduct of His sons and daughters. In _nature_ God sends the rain and sunshine on the just and the unjust alike, but in _human-nature_ He smiles or frowns according to each individual's deserts. In Jesus, God might say, "Come unto me," or He might make a whip of cords and drive the people out of the temple. Prayer does not cause God to change His wise and loving purpose, but it does determine _how_ He shall execute His holy will. If the conduct of a child does not change the father's actions toward him, then the father is both foolish and immoral. Men should learn that God is even greater in humanity than He is in nature. For in the one, He is uniform power, while in the other, He is Father, Redeemer, and Friend. In the world of wills, God is individual and human. And His inner communion with us is greatly intensified and clarified when there is added to it His audible voice from without. The voice of God speaking to us through human lips awakens the voice of God within us. How wonderfully clear was the Divine Voice in men's hearts when God spoke to them through Jesus! Likewise when the apostle Paul went to a new community, it seemed to receptive minds that God had come to town; and they were wholly justified in thinking so, for though God had been there all the time, powerfully through nature's laws and feebly in their darkened hearts, yet for the first time God was within their city in clear articulate speech, wooing them to Himself. This not only made God seem real to them, but it made it easy for them to believe and be baptized. Though able to rejoice for a time, yet heaviness soon came upon them after Paul's departure, because God too seemed to have departed from their midst. Neither were they mistaken in this, for God had no instrument remaining through which He could make Himself so humanly real to them, after His devoted and tried servant had gone away.